Refrigerator temperature

Flatfive wrote:
Our Dometic refrigerator does not have an adjustment for the temperature. (That I am aware of anyway) it's from 2003. Dometic Americana. Now the ice cream is soft. Does it need to be recharged?

I have the same vintage fridge as yours. Mine was made in Nov 2003.

Outside temps do affect the cooling of the fridge. The hotter out, the worse it can be.

I did 5 things and in this order to get my fridge to work now, very well. It maintenance 33 to 34 in the fringe compartment and the freezer is colder because of it.

1. I added an internal older mercury bulb fridge thermometer to read the actual inside temp so I had a clue what was going on inside. This helped but I had to open the door to see it and then I let a bunch of heat in.

2. I started out trying to adjust the slider on the coils in the fringe compartment. This is like what Old Biscuit showed, which by the way is the best I have ever seen that explained... Mine does not have that warmer/colder sticker. I fiddled with that slide to both extremes and it did not seem to do much of anything for me.

3. Added 2, Camco internal battery operated fans inside the fridge. These actually did help, just I was still up in the 38 F area and it would climb to the low 40's and take a good while to come back down. Again opening the door to read the thermometer had it's issues.

4. I added a RF remote thermometer. The $20 kind out of Walmart that would read inside and outside temps. I put the remote outside sender unit inside the fridge box. Now I can see the temp without opening the door. WOW great! Now I could really see how bad it was...

5. I added a fan in the top of the fridge compartment, up top under the vent. I heard about this from folks and I went to the Elkhart RV Hall of Fame and saw a Dometic fridge display. There they installed from the factory 2 muffin fans on the back of the fridge complete with thermal disk switches to turn them on and off. H'mm, why didn't they put them on ours? OK the why is another topic... After I added the fan up top and I put it on a thermal disk switch on the lower tube near the boiler to turn it on an off, WOW!!!! I hit the jack pot. The fridge will cool down faster, recover faster and it will drive down the fridge temp further. I could get it to 31 to 32 and freezing everything in side now. With it working this good, "then" I could fiddle with the slider and tweak in the 33 to 34F and it holds from winter to 95F in the summer.

Point: Get a remote sensor thermometer, get 2 Camco battery fridge fans for inside and get a top mounted fridge fan for the roof vent. This will save you about 3 years of the fridge evolution I went through...

The Camco fan



I did have to add a velcro strap to the fan to keep the back cover in contact with the batteries.


Here is the remote fridge thermometer. The temp sender unit is in the pic above


This is what Dometic did at the RV Hall of Fame demo unit


Here is the first one I did. I bought the Valtera roof fridge fan. Which died last year and I had to replace.

Take roof vent off


Snip screen/ fold back




Dicro caulk the screen back down


I also changed the brittle roof cover too.


I added the Valterra thermal disk switch and a fuse




Here is the replacement this spring. This is a double ball bearing muffin fan intended for horizontal install. It seems many of the computer muffin fans are vertical mounts and only have 1 bearing in them and they can fail prematurely when mounted horizontal.

The old Valterra


Heat gun to soften up the Dicro


Snip open the screen again. This time I opened it up more to get the mounting of the new fan in.


New fan in place


I added some 3M 33 electrical tape over the motor to help dirt proof it some more and moisture


Fold screen down


Re-Dicor the screen


Hope this helps

John

I have the same fridge and it's from 2003 as well.
It has no problem cooling in tripple digits but I have checked it's installation and fine tuned that aspect.
You should have no problem with it.

JBarca. Nice installation. If I ever have this problem I now know how to fix it. Thanks.