Factory-fix to reinforce Norcold refrigerator door hinge

[gatorjeff]

I experienced a broken door hinge on my Norcold 611 2-door refrigerator/freezer; fortunately, they replaced whole door under warranty, no one got hurt, and we were only slightly inconvenienced.
I've seen many posts that this is a too-common occurrence, and some DIY fixes.
Thought it might be helpful to post that Norcold now offers a set of steel reinforcements that simply slide onto the lower edge of the door (you have to remove the door first, but that's easy). Norcold will discuss and advise, but won't sell direct, so you either need to find a local dealer (up to $45) or buy on Amazon for ~$27 (which I did). It came quickly, seems well made, and although it's tempting to try a DIY fix and save most of that money, for this price I figured I'd give the factory fix a try. Will report after our upcoming 6-mo roadtrip how it did. I have a pdf of the instruction sheet including images of the hinge repair but don't see how to import into this post.

[renoman69]

Factory-fix to reinforce Norcold refrigerator door hinge

[ronfisherman]

gatorjeff wrote:
reply re Amazon listing: yes, that looks like the listing. Also, that's the part # I ordered; I believe it got edited out of my initial posting. The install sheet does indicate N6/N8 so that would seem to confirm it'll fix your unit too. Comment made re keeping heavy items off of door is certainly correct too; we figured that out after the failure, and will continue to avoid weighting down the door even after this fix.

Another item that creates a lot of weight is wood inserts that are put on front of the door to match interior of RV.
The door failures were a big thing on the Kodiak Chassis forum back in 2010/11. I have not heard of any failures since the brackets were installed.
The part # listed above is the same one in that forum. The "KIT" part number is 634166.

[gatorjeff]

reply re Amazon listing: yes, that looks like the listing. Also, that's the part # I ordered; I believe it got edited out of my initial posting. The install sheet does indicate N6/N8 so that would seem to confirm it'll fix your unit too. Comment made re keeping heavy items off of door is certainly correct too; we figured that out after the failure, and will continue to avoid weighting down the door even after this fix.

[I_am_still_wayn]

Another thing that helps to preserve the hinge is to remove all the weight from the stored items in the door shelves before getting underway. That's a lot of weight that exerts downward force on the hinges, especially when going over severe bumps.

[j-d]

Is that kit listed on Amazon like this:

"Norcold 634166 Door Hinge Retrofit Kit" ?

We have a 2002 N811 and maybe ought to be looking into doing this upgrade.

[96Bounder30E]

Moved from general RVing