Refridgerator replacement

What failed on your last Dometic? Sure seems like lots of gas fridges get removed for not cooling well when the problem is only poor ventilation. Over the years had many gas fridges that lasted 10+ years. Found in humid climates it was best to leave the RV plugged in and the fridge on. Keeping the coils hot seemed to help keep them from rusting and springing a leak. The weak spot always seemed to be the welds on the coils. A little surface rust would dig into the shallow areas of the weld and cause a leak. Had much better luck with our older rigs prior to slides. When the fridge was able to have a overhead vent through the roof, it got much better air flow and stayed cooler in hot weather. Now that most fridges are in slides, it's more of a challenge to keep the air in the back of the fridge cool. In my decades of RVing I've never seen any gas fridge that slowly went bad. That type of symptom usually meant some sort of ventilation problem with the back of the fridge, often a failed sensor for cooling fans, a bad fan, or a displaced shroud. They cool the same until the gas leaks out and even the tiniest of holes will dump the entire charge of hydrogen gas (the smallest element) overnight.



This is what I've done on our latest coach... So far the modification has worked well, this next summer will be the real test but I'm confident I've solved my problem. Other gas fridges I had with overhead vents cooled just fine no matter how hot it got outside so I'm sure poor performance is almost always a venting issue.

https://www.rv.net/forum/index.cfm/fuseaction/thread/tid/29770712.cfm