Fridge cooling fan mod

patkvm wrote:
EnochLight

I have been following your posts regarding your fridge. I have no answers for you but I would like to share my experience with you. I have a 2013 Jayco Swift SLX 185RB that has the same setup as yours. I have been dealing with fridge problems for a year and a half now, temps rising to over 70 degrees during the day and dropping to 20 degrees at night. The dealer has tried to resolve the problem with baffles and fans. Finally Jayco sent a transport to come and pick the unit up, Jayco and Norcold engineers spent a month measuring and building custom baffles adding bigger and more fans behind the fridge, then they replaced the fridge and repeated the process all over again. During this time that Jayco had the trailer there was some questions regarding the A/C unit that was mounted in the side wall of the trailer. Jayco figured out that when the A/C was turned on the air flow was disrupted from behind the fridge causing it to not cool, the A/C unit that is installed in these units is a window A/C so it will pull the condenser cooling air from the living space. So Jayco when back to the drawing board, Jayco looked at mounting a roof top A/C but due to the design of the trailer it could not handle the loads caused by a roof top A/C. Jayco tried to seal around the A/C but no luck. So they changed the baffles and fan design one more time.

When I got the trailer back last week they completely changed everything behind the fridge. Jayco extended the warranty another year and said it was good to go. We took it out last weekend and the fridge failed again. Since I have owned this trailer I have asked everyone that I came across with a trailer like mine they all say they have some sort of fridge cooling problem.

After a year and a half we have come to no other choice but to unload the unit. We are very saddened by having to trade the unit in but now it is the dealer's and Jayco's problem.

Like I said I am sorry I do not have any fixes or solutions for you but I just wanted to tell you what happened to us in hopes that you or your dealer might be able to pull some ideas out of our story.

Good luck.

Ugh... that's terribly disheartening, but thanks for sharing your experience. Seeing as how our designs are very close, I hope I don't experience the same engineering challenge. As of right now, just with my rudimentary cardboard baffle I am able to keep temps below 40F most of the day, and on our trip last week it stayed around 34F-38F at night. There were times in mid-day when it was creeping up to 42F though.

I'm hoping a properly installed (Dometic designed) metal baffle will correct things. I also noticed that there is about 3" of space between the fridge rear guts and the back wall (Dometic recommends that there's a max of 1"), so a lower baffle should be installed as well.

That said, your experience is troubling. I'm really sorry it didn't work out. I'll keep everyone posted on how my service through the dealer pans out this week (I had to reschedule taking it in to this Thursday due to epic flooding here in the metro-Detroit region last night).