Bro's Dometic fails again.

jefe 4x4 wrote:
Calling all gurus du Dometique. On our recent trip to Death Valley, my brother John's refrigerator in his 9.5 OUTFITTER! stopped with the cold. This is the second time. He had to replace the fridge once before, i think on warranty. Luckily he has a spare Aussie top loader fridge in the back seat and plugged in, so he transfered the contents of the n'er do well to the Aussie. He won the Aussie fridge in a raffle at one of the King of the Hammers runs.
Here is his note about it: Bro wrote:
"Say, would you inquire about my fridge? It's a Dometic. Needle barely moves to the white/green line but not deep into it like usual. Something tells me it's not a flame problem but an ammonia problem. It's possible the gas leaked from the rough trip. What say RV.net?"
jefe

jefe4x4, what model of Dometic does John have? Has he though about getting a 12Vdc compressor refrigerator, I did after having too much trouble and break downs with my Norcold 300.3 and spending too much money on repairs.

If he ignored the level the fridge rule, it could have wiped out the coil.

Wayne

In case it helps, on my Outfitter (equipped with Norcold 300 unit) the most common issues with the refrigerator:
1) Spiders love to nest in the gas lines and clog orifice, resulting in less than optimum fuel/temp. Inspect, clean lines if necessary.
2) The vertical "tube" chimney above the flame is subject to corrosion, rust build-up, which hinders heat transfer. Use pipe cleaners to clean out rust.
3) Stock thermocouple placement is pretty good. But once while troubleshooting I removed it, cleaned off built-up corrosion and made sure it was inserted properly to sense flame, and proper operation was restored.
4) Not applicable in this case; but I discovered (the hard way) that if 110 VAC hot and neutral leads are reversed (as they were in my camper) the unit will not work on 110 VAC. It makes sense to see of the unit still works OK on 110VAC?

I agree if you had an ammonia leak you probably would've smelled it; so hopefully something not as serious?

Mine has had igniter problems in wet weather, and you and John certainly had wet weather on your DV trip. Past Googling of this problem turned up the hint to try spraying WD-40 on the igniter, which probably should be removed from the refrigerator first. I never actually did that, because the next time I tried it the frig worked fine.

Not quit enough info to diagnos , but if it was an ammonia leak during the trip you certainly would smell it . Now that you are home try t on electric .