Refrigerator won't cool down

They are slow to cool down- much more so than a house fridge due to evaporative cooling.
I jump start ours by placing a few ice blocks in the freezer and fridge section. Also, we don't put hot items in the fridge either. Even with the blocks it takes quite a while to cool down.

There should be a white clip on one of the cooling fins inside the refridgerator. This is the thermistor, and it controls the temp. Try moving it up to make the fridge colder. I plug into shore power the day before departing and my fridge gets cold overnight.

switch to propane ,see if that helps ,it does take 12hrs to cool down to a useable temp. light stove to bleed gas line, then frig.

We too start ours the day or so before we leave on a trip, the luxery of having it at home. also in hot weather, your fridge should use extra air flow across the back of the unit. We have a thermostat 12 volt fan mounted in ours to move air. you can get them for about $25 bucks and install it yourself. And like the others, make sure your tab on the fins inside is not laying down and mounted towards the top. Good Luck & Be Safe ! ! !

If fridge doesn't cool after leaving it on for 12 hours then check to see if fuses are OK. Depending of fridge/rig there s/b fuses in a black box located on fridge control board - find exterior access fridge access panel on side of RV. Might be fridge fuse on rigs DC distribution panel as well. Also - check to see if fridge operates on propane.

Wow, thanks for all the fast replies - this forum is awesome!

I am at work now and hope it will keep cooling down throughout the day. I guess I may have been expecting it to cool faster but it's good to know that it may take longer than my house fridge. I do have the thermistor up about 75-80% of the way up that last fin and will adjust accordingly once things cool down.

Thanks again for all the fast replies and I'll post up once I have a chance to check the temps again.

Just curious where you are located? I'm in FL where the heat and humidity are brutal right now. If you're not also running the AC in the camper and have hot conditions inside/outside, then the fridge will take longer than 12 hours to cool. Try more like 24 hours. Open the door for a few seconds and that sets you back a bunch if its not good and cold already. Patience ;-)

Quadna71 wrote:
Wow, thanks for all the fast replies - this forum is awesome!

I am at work now and hope it will keep cooling down throughout the day. I guess I may have been expecting it to cool faster but it's good to know that it may take longer than my house fridge. I do have the thermistor up about 75-80% of the way up that last fin and will adjust accordingly once things cool down.

Thanks again for all the fast replies and I'll post up once I have a chance to check the temps again.

Moving the thermistor will only affect cooling IF you have a fridge that does NOT have an adjustable temp control on upper panel.
Moving it will only cause a 4*-6*F change in overall temps.

Is RV LEVEL?
Absorption fridges need to be reasonably level to function properly.
Off level operation will disrupt the gravity flow of coolant which will cause overheating of coolant which will cause the anti-rust inhibitor to crystallize and plate out on inside of cooling tubes. It is accumulative and permanent damage.

Absorption fridges require time to initially cool down. Freezer cools down first then food section.

Quadna71 wrote:
We bought this travel trailer about a month ago, this weekend was to be our first trip trying it out. It's a Crossroads Slingshot 23CK and has a refrigerator with a separate freezer door. It was working great up until last week. I had unplugged from the house and then plugged it in last night and now it doesn't work. The battery had been a little bit low so I disconnected everything and hooked up my regular automotive battery charger to the deep cycle until it was charged using the two amp setting.

Here's where I'm at:
The battery is fully charged up, connected, and the camper is plugged in to our power in the garage. All the lights and the power and the air conditioning in the camper work great, except the refrigerator will not seem to cool down. The light inside turns on when you open the door, and I think I have the switches on top of the refrigerator in the correct positions. First button is pushed in so the refrigerator is turned On and the second button's pushed in so that the refrigerator is in Auto - not gas.

The camper is perfectly level, I have two full bottles of propane, and they are connected but both valve turned off. Am I missing something???

ummm. . .

Both valves are turned off? Really? And you are expecting the PROPANE refrigerator to cool at all? Go home at lunch time, and rturn on both bottles, then start the water heater. Run the water heater for a max of about 1 minute to clear the propane lines of any air, then try the refrigerator on gas. This will start the cooling process, and you will need to wait another 6 hours for it to get cold. If it had been running on electric, then it might have changed from 70F to 50 F overnight, but not really gotten cold, unless it is in the 50's where you live.

The 2 amp charge setting is not nearly high enough to fully charge a RV battery in one week. Set it on 10 amps or higher if you got it. (do not use the 'start' setting, it is not designed for charging a battery, but instead applies full capacity beyond the charger's ability to run more than 30 seconds). You are really better off with the RV's 45 amp + charger running things. I wonder why it is not charging the battery - a bad fuse or circuit breaker not resetting? You probably have a 85 amp hour group 24 battery, or better would be the group 27 battery with 105 amp hour capacity. Notice that it would take a minimum of 40 hours to recharge either battery, yet if the lights are on inside the RV, that can consume much more than the 2 amp charger can put out in 24 hours. . . Just the CO meter and propane leak detector can use 35 amp hours per day, and discharge a full battery in 3 days.

Check for power at the RV battery charger's receptacle. Check for tripped GFI or something. . .

Once you have the battery meter inside the RV reading "Full" and then turn on the refrigerator for a while, say 24 hours minimum, then let me know if the freezer is starting to cool. Yes it can take that long to cool off, especially when it is warm out.

Run it on gas, not electric, as the gas burner is 2,200 Btu's while electric is only about 900 Btu's. When in a campground, at night, you can run it on electric, but during a warm day (above 80F) then change to gas, and it will cool better.

Fred.

Old-Biscuit wrote:

Absorption fridges need to be reasonably level to function properly.
Off level operation will disrupt the gravity flow of coolant which will cause overheating of coolant which will cause the anti-rust inhibitor to crystallize and plate out on inside of cooling tubes. It is accumulative and permanent damage.

Absorption fridges require time to initially cool down. Freezer cools down first then food section.

Agree with all of the above. The OP didn't say whether it was a new or used unit, but if the latter, older fridges require more time to cool down than if they are new, and if the TT has been used off level in the past this also lowers the efficiency of your fridge - permanently.

Like others have said, we also start up the fridge a day or two before, and any food or beverages we put in are already pre-chilled. Extremely hot climates (deep South, Southwest) are a challenge to RV refrigerators.

And finally, try to limit how often and for how long the fridge door is open. One RV tech I know tells his customers that for every one minute the door is open, the fridge requires an hour to re-establish the temperature. Good luck!