Villa wrote:
I can't believe that Dometic put these in with the stamp of 325 watts. Isn't that a little deceptive? And further more, they are not planning to replace the element that they claim is at the root of the issue.
Hi Villa, well I have no problem believing it at all. If they didn't know, then I'd like an explanation as to why my parts list reads 17374228/9 Heater 325W, 115V and the original element is marked 325W 120V. So someone at Dometic made a decision. Also the new heater element is different in construction, so there may have been a change of manufacturer.
The manual goes on to list RM 3663 RM 3862 RM 3863 as having the same elements. The way I see it, and have come to believe, is that they accepted a batch of below tolerance elements (for whatever reasons)and installed them believing all would be well. After all whats a couple of ohms between friends. If not why did they change the reference to the element in the users manual. Try buying an element with the above part number and watch all the changes to a new number. Yep the new element will be 120v 325w and 44 ohms resistance, one oddity here is the package it came in was marked 115v 325w figure that one out.
Wayne wrote:
Type 1 -- Dometic’s published rate of 0.01% is for the risk of a fire,
OK Wayne, that makes sense. It's not hard to believe that by far the majority of failures would be while the units were on 120vac and didn't result in fire. If the metal around the boiler weld was stressed enough through electrical operation, and was ready to break any time, then yes failure could occur while operating on gas. Mine fridge being in a camper most likely spent a lot of time running on LP
Dometic’s recall, so far as I can tell, deals only with failure Type 1. Their “fix” will prevent the refrigerant mix from catching fire if/when it leaks.
Yes, I'll certainly agree to that, and will have the "fix" done because I have no idea of how much the unit was used on AC and without an x-ray would have no idea of the weld condition.
With the new element operating, hopefully within specifications, the best I can hope for is that further deterioration will not take place in the weld area and the unit will not fail during my ownership.
(well I can hope can't I? ;))
I wonder what the real failure rate is due to the broken weld.
Willis
