Dometic Refrgerator RM1350 I give up

[RonWSl]

Over the last 15 years I have owned 4 RVs - I replaced the NoCold in the last 2 with a Residential refrigerator. I bought my current2018 5th wheel unit in Oct 2019 when it was only a year old, and until this week the Dometic Refrigerator has worked great at 5/33 (freezer - box)very consistently. I went to bring it home last weekend and it began having problems, now that it is home, I can't get temps over 20/55 on propane or electric. I replaced the two heater elements but no change, so I Give Up!!1 I don't want to replace a bunch of parts when I can probably replace it with a residential unit that will work a lot better for a less or equal amount than repairs on this one.

I want to replace the RM1350 with a residential unit - which make, model would you recommend size and performance wise???? And, do you know of any dealers in the Central Florida area that would do the job?

Thanks in advance
Ron S

[AllegroD]

RonWSl wrote:
I finally gave up on the Dometic and installed a new Samsung RF18 on Friday.

We really liked our RF18. I bet you do. also.

[Gjac]

When mine went to propane while on electric it was the eyebrow wire harness that connected to the control board that needed cleaning. It runs from the front of the refer to the control board. I removed the harness and cleaned the control board with an eraser and the harness with a nail file. All was well after that.

[RonWSl]

I finally gave up on the Dometic and installed a new Samsung RF18 on Friday. The Depth and width were virtually identical, although it was higher then the Dometic so we had to take out the old base and basically dropped it to the slide floor level. We would have done this to start with but the Samsungs were out of stock and just became available at Home Depot again recently. I would note that I did contact the supplier of the Dometic cooling unit (david Force) and while he was helpful, none of his suggestions helped. I still have to take the cooling unit off of the Dometic to get it out the RV door and will check to make sure that the mastic was applied correctly; although, I am pretty sure it was. If not, then I will redo the mastic once out of the RV and if it tests ok will sell it as a whole unit. IF not, then I will put its various good parts up for sale.

[bucky]

2oldman wrote:
If you do any dry camping be sure to factor in batteries and inverter.

Yes, and add long travels days also for the batteries and inverter.

[BarneyS]

I would call a local mobile RV tech and have them replace it with a residential unit. The same thing happened to me when we arrived down in Florida several years ago. The mobile tech wanted me to put in a residential unit but I foolishly decided to replace my Dometic unit with another one. That one is still working today but I wish I had gone with his suggestion instead. Would have saved a whole bunch of money and probably have a better working unit.

I no longer have the mobile techs number or name but he was active in the Tampa area and I suspect he is still in business. After looking around online, I think this place may be the one I used. Good luck.:)
Barney

Edit: On second thought, this may be the one we used.

[RonWSl]

This refrigerator is baffling me. I can get it to run 12 hours or so on electric, get's down to 30's in the box and -5 or less in the freezer, then it stops working on electric and wants to switch to propane which I haven't reconnected yet. Would a faulty thermister cause that??? I did replace the original with a snip the tip one before I replaced the cooling unit trying to fix that problem, so I don't know if I had this problem before I installed the new cooling unit. Before typing this I did replace the slow blow fuse just to be sue that wasn't the cause and it still wouldn't turn back on electric??? Naturally, we are supposed to leave for a month next Friday so I need to get this figured out.

[RonWSl]

This is my 4th RV I have owned, I had to rerplace the Norcolds in the last 2 with residentials, much like srdeane did and will likely go that route on the present 5th wheel we have.

I too thought the thermister may be bad and ordered one which will be here tomorrow and we will see.

BUT NOW, was checking things on it yesterday and turned it off. Then when I went to turn it back on got the E0 error code. I tried the puling the fuses to try and reset it which others suggested but no luck. I have now had them pulled overnight and will see later today. Would a bad thermister also cause that Error Code?

Thanks

[ferndaleflyer]

^^^^^^^^^probably

[Old-Biscuit]

Thermistor is faulty

[srdeane]

We had a Dometic TM1350 in our Everest fifth wheel. It was 13 years old and would regularly jump up above acceptable temperatures. We tried fans, interior and exterior, and adjustments. Nothing worked. We finally replaced it with a Whirlpool residential refrigerator that is working great. The Whirlpool is a top freezer style with 14.3 cf of space overall. It fit inside the cavity easily with about a 4-1/2 inch gap and the front sticks out about 2-1/2 inches. We had an RV tech remove the Dometic and install the Whirpool, and he firmly attached it to the floor. We insulated around the refrigerator, painted some trim pieces and adhered them (with double stick tape) to the wood moulding around the gap. It looks really good and did the job. I wish we had just switched out the refrigerator last year instead of fussing with it for so long!

[2oldman]

If you do any dry camping be sure to factor in batteries and inverter.