Norcold compressor fridge troubles

You are looking for 23 volts, not amps. Regardless, If you can hear any kind of sound coming from the compressor running and there is no cooling, it's dead. The wire I was talking about is a black wire that plugs onto a pin located on the bottom of the compressor. There is also a ground lug with two wires attached to it. If yours is any other configuration, then it is not a Norcold unit.

Whoops, sorry that is so giant! The pic shows the bottom third of the compressor, and wires there (after removing a small cover plate -- should I also take off the cooling grill?).

I have another pic showing the top 2/3 of the compressor, with wires in two shades of green, if y'all want it.

Thank you folks so much! Yes, it is a Sawafugi compressor.

I was not able to find the L-shaped connector. I have photos of the wiring and will look in the help section of the forum for how to attach them (clearly the method is not like other forums I am familiar with!).

I don't think my little harbor freight voltmeter will take 23amps.

Does the sound tell you anything? Not the normal fridge hum (which is pretty loud on this antique), but a very quiet ringing sound. Not nothing.

Am I correct in understanding that my compressor is almost certainly dead, regardless?

He also ran down his battery very fast so something is drawing current big time.

My Engel chest freezer is now between 8 and 9 years old.. The only thing I have done to it is I took it outside last summer and blew much of the dust out of it (8 years of dust).. Oh, and the power lines that feed it have been serviced a couple times, but that is not it's fault.. My hookup.

Coming off the battery is a 40 amp fuse and some 40 amp wire to a power strip (West Mountain Radio Rig-Runner 4012) next to the Driver's seat.

Coming off that is a 12 volt accessory with pigtail (And Anderson power poles) I may some day delete that and put Andersons on the Engel's cord).

I've had two problems with that 40 amp line.. Found the first with a test lamp, and excised it.. (Corroded spot mid-run, sliced it out, soldered and sealed it) and the second I found by observation (The splice (Compression but splice thing) the dealer used when they put in the run for me.... Failed.

Sliced, soldered and sealed again.

I'm good at soldering and sealing.

The problem with those is when that wire fails it not only takes out the freezer, but 3 radios and a fan.

wa8yxm wrote:

Ivylog wrote:
I did not know that Norcold made a refer with a compressor. I thought they were all absorption heat cycle. What model # is it? I'd plug it into AC and give it 8 hours to cool.

Both Norcold (At AmericanRV) AND Dometic (Company web page)

Make Danfoss jobs

To the O/P.. sounds like the compressor is siezed, so the motor never came off start and thus current draw was very high..

HOW TO CONFIRM.

Get a good DC-Ammeter that can do 10-20 amps and either put it in line (Remove fuse, add jumper leads do not forget to include the fuse so that it is :terminal---fust--Meter---other terminal

Or use a clamp on DC ammeter like the Crafstman 82369 (Which is beside me as I type). If it shows high current (more than six amps) for more than 10 seconds, you have a siezed compressor.

I have never had a Sawafugi compressor seize but I suppose they could, They fail internally and continue to run but do not cool. The other failure mode is an open winding and you do not hear it doing anything. Either failure mode is moot since the compressors are not replaceable. Bottom line is, if you get 23VAC to the compressor and the box is not cooling, the compressor is bad.

Ivylog wrote:
I did not know that Norcold made a refer with a compressor. I thought they were all absorption heat cycle. What model # is it? I'd plug it into AC and give it 8 hours to cool.

Both Norcold (At AmericanRV) AND Dometic (Company web page)

Make Danfoss jobs

To the O/P.. sounds like the compressor is siezed, so the motor never came off start and thus current draw was very high..

HOW TO CONFIRM.

Get a good DC-Ammeter that can do 10-20 amps and either put it in line (Remove fuse, add jumper leads do not forget to include the fuse so that it is :terminal---fust--Meter---other terminal
Or use a clamp on DC ammeter like the Crafstman 82369 (Which is beside me as I type). If it shows high current (more than six amps) for more than 10 seconds, you have a siezed compressor.

Bob Landry wrote:
Just for clarification, The Danfoss compressors do not run on 12V. The electronic control modules accept either 12V or 24VDC. The compressor itself runs on a split phase low AC voltage that is created by the electronic module.
You will not go wrong with any of these units as the compressor, condenser and electronic module are all the same depending on if it's a BD35 or a BD50. In 15 years of doing this, I've replaced around three compressors, they just don't fail. You are pretty safe shopping on price. The two that come to mind that I don't recommend are Tundra and IsoTherm, not because of the compressors, I just don't care for the way they build their boxes. YMMV. I do like the new Norcolds and my customers have been very happy with Vitrofrigo.

The older Norcold boxes with the Sawafugi compressors were so unreliable, my distributor in Houston stopped selling Norcold altogether and I had to go to a place in Minnesota to get parts. If the gas absorption box in my trailer ever goes out, I'm going to replace it with a Danfoss box.

Bob, does Norcold use Danfross compressors now?

Just for clarification, The Danfoss compressors do not run on 12V. The electronic control modules accept either 12V or 24VDC. The compressor itself runs on a split phase low AC voltage that is created by the electronic module.
You will not go wrong with any of these units as the compressor, condenser and electronic module are all the same depending on if it's a BD35 or a BD50. In 15 years of doing this, I've replaced around three compressors, they just don't fail. You are pretty safe shopping on price. The two that come to mind that I don't recommend are Tundra and IsoTherm, not because of the compressors, I just don't care for the way they build their boxes. YMMV. I do like the new Norcolds and my customers have been very happy with Vitrofrigo.

The older Norcold boxes with the Sawafugi compressors were so unreliable, my distributor in Houston stopped selling Norcold altogether and I had to go to a place in Minnesota to get parts. If the gas absorption box in my trailer ever goes out, I'm going to replace it with a Danfoss box.

Naio wrote:
Hello folks, this is my first post :).

I'm converting a truck, and I lucked into (I thought) a Norcold 12/120 for $50.

Like an idjit, I hooked it up to a 200ah AGM battery and left it overnight. In the morning, the battery was at 5v and the fridge was warm. I am working on the battery, cycling it and hoping. But, in the meantime, the fridge seems to have died.

It now doesn't work on AC nor on DC (with a different battery). It makes a little 'ringing' sound, but not its normal (louder) hum, and it doesn't cool.

I've checked the connections from fridge to battery, the AC/DC switch, and turned it off and on again like a computer :). What else can I try? I am generally comfortable with mechanical stuff, but clueless about refrigerators.

Thanks for any help.

If the Sawafugi compressor is toast feel lucky that you only paid 50 bucks for it. Replacement units are very costly and can be bought only from the maker of the refrigerator. When I was looking around to go to a 12Vdc compressor type refrigerator I ruled out the Sawafgi compressor because of the replacement expense and there wasn't a lot of information on them.

I decided on refrigerator that used the Danfross 12Vdc compressors in their units, they look just like your domestic ref. compressor and can be bought at Johnstone Supply (replacement compressor). This subject of 12Vdc compressor refrigerators has been talked about a lot on the Truck Camper Forum and many of us TCer's have them incuding me and I will never go back to a absorption unit with all the headace I had with it.

I ended up buying a Dometic CR1110 which fits in the same space that my old unrelible Norcold 300.3 use to be. If your existing norcold is toast and you want to stay with a 12Vdc compressor refrigerator here's some link for you and post a question in the TC forum on this subject, you'll get a lot of reponses.
Indel Webasto ( Isoltherm)
Nova Kool
Dometic

Any more questions just PM me.

My personel thanks to Chris Bryant for making those pdf file open to all of us, I've used them many times.