Hi again,
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imq707s wrote:
The fridge is a Dometic 2652 that runs on 120v or GAS. It won't run on 12v power.
3. The fans making noise, is this the power converter fans or an air circulation fan in the back of the fridge? Air circulation fan in the back of the fridge. Normally in the past I've always been able to hear the fan cycle on and off....but this time, it was constantly on..I've never heard it do that before.
Good feed back, this helps.
A clarification first just in case you did not realize, the fridge must have both 12 VDC and 120 VAC to operate on the electric element. The 12 volts DC runs all the controls including the gas valve, ignition etc. The "only" thing the 120 VAC does, is provide high power to run the electric heater element as the power draw of that heater is too much to practically run on 12 VDC. You can run on gas mode with only 12 VDC to boondock/camp off grid.
You are correct, you do not have a 12 VDC "option" to create electric heat. Many pop up campers do have that feature but it is more to maintain a fridge at temp then trying to cool it down.
With that said, now that the fans are on the back of the fridge, I didn't ask, didn't know, I'm assuming this fridge is in a slide room? Fridges in a slide must have the fans due to the air venting in the side of the slide. Non slide campers have a roof vent and natural convection will work. The fans are not part of the 120 VAC running problem. I will speculate you where getting some level of cooling while on 120 electric, as the Dometic fans are on a thermal disk switch that turns the fans on and off by the cooling coil temperature. When the cooling coil gets hot enough, the fans turn on and when it cools down, they shut off.
It may be the electric element was going on and off intermittently overnight. You may have received just enough cooling (electric heat) to trip the fans on all the time as the fan switch was warm enough to start the fans, but the fridge did not cool down inside enough as it was cycling the heating element on and off over night. The fans will cycle on/off under normal operation, on gas or electric as the fridge adds cooling, the food compartment in time gets cold enough to satisfy the setpoint, then shuts down the heating element. As the cooling coil cools down far enough, the fans shut off.
As Doug mentioned, there is no fault light for the electric element not working. The fault light only has to do with a flame failure when running on LP gas.
What Doug described will test out the electric element and the PC control board as a big picture test.
The actual heater element is a simple 2 wire device. Think of it as a 325 watt 120 volt light bulb. Give it power, and the thing makes heats. Take the power away, and it stops heating. Something is shutting down the electric element, possibly intermittently.
Hope this helps
John
