Camoman64

Well hate to bring up an old thread but I couldn't find much info on my fridge being frozen and shut down and wouldn't cool after warming up. So I will share what happened so maybe it will help someone else. Here in south East Texas we had a cold snap where temps were never above freezing for a week temps in teens and even down to 5 degrees one night. I had no idea this would harm my NorCold N 811 F Fridge. Anyway after the storm was over I had to repair all the busted water lines and filters from our well pump and the whole time my fridge was thawing without me noticing. Well I went out of town for a couple days came back to temps in the 80's and everything was thawed in freezer and warm in fridge but indicator light was still on saying everything was ok. I only have an hour of daylight to work on stuff after work so the first night I just cleaned fridge out turned it off hoping it would reset itself and dried it out. Got home on day 2 turned it back on and after being on all night didn't cool a bit. But lights were normal in gas or auto. So I turned it back off and started researching on the net. Downloaded the manual and when I got home opened the back panels and started looking. found the reset button on stack was sticking out so I reset that check voltage and fuses and everything checked out ok no leaks of ammonia or nothing everything looked brand new the fridge is only 3 years old. Well put it in gas mode and it fired right up had a good flame and lights on front were normal and it started heating the boiler. let it run all night and the next morning still hot inside freezer. So back to the net researching when I found this forum and this thread. After reading all the post and links about gelled refrigerant when I got home I put a infra red heat lamp on what I call the reservoir and pointed it where it also shined on the coils and tubes on back of the fridge behind the camper wall I monitored it so it wasn't going to catch stuff on fire of course. I put a hair dryer on the hot setting blowing on the condenser coil at top of fridge and let these heat for approx. 1.5 hours. It was rather warm when I removed the light and dryer. I took a small hammer and just lightly tapped on all the pipes and reservoir a few time just to try and break stuff free if there was a blockage and I have no idea if this helped or not but did it anyway. After about 20 minutes to let it kind of cool down after the heat lamp I put it in gas mode and fired it off. I let it run for about 15 minutes and opened freezer and noticed it was much cooler and touched the back plate and there was a light feel of frost. Got my hopes up for sure. about 6 hours later it was cold. I put an ice tray full of water in at midnight and when I woke for work at 6 it was frozen solid thank goodness. I don't know if what I did is why it started working but it did so I figured I would share and it might help someone else. Now I have to turn it off and put all the covers back on everything and I'm kind of reluctant to shut it down for it might not fire back up lol....Well good luck if you have the same problem as I did.