Woke up this morning to a dead fridge. We're plugged in to a 30 amp pedestal in Puerto Penasco. Everything works except the fridge. Tried disconnecting shore power and going to gas; nothing happens. It's dometic classic.
Thoughts?
Roger
Ther is a very faint odor of ammonia is the fridge access compartment.
That's a sign of a cooling unit failure/leak. Also a fire hazard.
Might be a good idea to unplug that fridge and shut it down.
Yep. She's unplugged.
Yup, do NOT run it on either heat source. Remove 12 VDC from it as well as the 120 VAC cord from the outlet.
I've unplugged the a/c cord and the 12vdc power from the mother board.
Oh, and be sure to drink all the cold beer before it gets hot!
Is your coach level? Regardless, if you weren't imagining the ammonia smell it's time for a new fridge or a cooling unit.
Whatever you replace it with it won't be a 30 plus year decision. Now for the discussion on replacement options.
Sorry for the dead fridge. Always sad. Good luck in fridge repair or replacement. For what it's worth, I opted to replace our 32 year old dometic with a new 12 volt Norecold compressor fridge. Our dry camping is light and I was glad to get away from an absorption fridge. Also I didn't want the power loss of a 110 fridge.
Good luck. Good news is there are lots of options out there. Sad news is, few of them are inexpensive.
Michael
Fridge is out and gone. Now begins the search for a new one. I like the idea of a 12 vdc compresser model. No propane, no ammonia. We don't do a lot of dry camping; maybe add a little solar to keep.the batteries charged.
Suggestions welcome.
That is certainly one option.
The other is to buy a (less $$) residential refrigerator based on current or easily modified space.
Roger, I don't know what the original fridge was in my 1993 U225. When I bought it in 2016, it came with a brand new Norcold N811 which I really like. I'll be interested to see what you come up with in case I ever need to repair or replace my Norcold. I see cooling units for it for as little as $475.
From the records I have on our U225, it looks like the original fridge was a dometic with an ice maker. It had a newer dometic when we bought the coach 13 years ago.
Roger we replaced our original Domectic with a Norcold and the DW absolutely hates it. It's about 2" shallower so she calls it her condiment fridge. The thing was purchased during Covid and there were very few options cause we wanted one with an ice maker. At least more options now.
I guess to do it over I would have replaced the cooling unit. Point is, little things can make big difference to the DW. Choose carefully 🙂
Anyone familiar with the Contour 12vdc fridge offered by Camping World?