1Sammiedog

Unfortunatly Norcold started making their cooling units with a cheaper grade of tubing several years back either to save a buck or to get you to replace your refrigerator sooner. These poor quality cooling units started failing early and have led to refrigerator fires, so rather than recall the whole cooling unit Norcold has chose to install these crumby recall fixit boxes that are just a bandaid fix. If you want a sure fire fix, you can do what I did and install an Amish Built cooling unit. They are made using a 50% thicker wall tubing and don't need any recall boxes. I am now once again a happy camper since I made the change. Here is a video showing my cooling unit replacement. 1Sammiedog

Carl, Brett gives you some very good ideas to check on your fridge for proper cooling functioning. With a setting of #9 on your fridge, you should be seeing a freezer temperature of 0 to 10 degrees and fridge temperature of between 32 to 40 degrees. If you cannot maintain a temperature of 40 degrees or less in the fridge, I would suspect a partially clogged evaporator coil or it could be that your external fans on the back of your refrigerator are not working. If it turns out to be a bad cooling unit, you can get a new one installed for half the price of a new refrigerator or do it yourself like I did and save some $$$$ in labor costs. If your interested, take a look at the picture slideshow I made while doing my It will also show the new external fans I installed to help cool the coils and condensor fins.Good Luck, 1Sammiedog

Ron, Does the refrigerator just work OK on 120 vac or does it work like it should normally? Freezer temp should be 0 to 10 degrees and fridge should be 32 to 40 degrees. 1Sammiedog

As Wolfe said, the coolant goes to the freezer evaporator first and then goes to the fridge evaporator. Some refrigerators can develop a blockage in the evaporator tubing which will usually show up as the fridge not getting cold like it should first. Then eventually the freezer will start to not get cold. I've been told that sometimes if you drive your rig around for a while, the coolant blockage may dislodge itself and the fridge will start to work again. I have also heard that if you remove the refrigerator and turn it upside down for a while, then reinstall it, you may have luck in getting it to work. If all else fails, it may be time for a cooling unit replacement. If your planning on keeping your rig I would suggest not buying a rebuilt cooling unit. It may be cheaper, but sooner rather than later it will fail. I recently replaced my Norcold 1200 cooling unit with an Amish Built cooling unit because I was getting tired of hearing about all the recall fixes and potential fires related to the Norcold cooling units. I made a video of my Amish Built cooling unit installation that shows whats involved in doing a cooling unit conversion. My Norcold 1200 has been working now for a month with freezer temps at 0 to 10 degrees and fridge temps at 32 to 38 degrees with a refrigerator setting of #5.

I have owned several motorhomes over the last 30 years, all with their share of problems of one kind or another. In the past several months I've followed post after post about the failures, fires and recalls on the Norcold refrigerators. This has been of major concern for me and my family as we love to travel in our motorhome and up until recently have felt reasonably safe while traveling. With all the concern about fires and patch job recall fixes on the Norcold fridges, I decided to order one of the Amish Built Cooling Units from RV Cooling Unit Warehouse and do the conversion myself. Now please understand, I'm no spring chicken, but I do like to try to do as much maintenance on my Winnebago Journey as possible. So I figured I would try and tackle the job myself. I ordered the unit on a Monday and picked it up on Friday. By that time I had already pulled the fridge out and had it laying on the floor of my coach. I took my time over a period of several days (just wanted to do it right the first time) and also make a few modifications. Along the way I took pictures of the work and made a short slideshow video to post on "YouTube" so that all who want to see what is involved in this conversion may do so. I now have an excellent working refrigerator that has been holding a temperature of 34 degrees for the last four days on a setting of #4 with an outside temperature of 90 in the shade. The installation of the SS-30 Halon Remote Fire Extinguisher is an added bonus in that me and my wife and little doggie can sleep comfortably without one eye open worrying about a potential fire. Thanks, 1Sammiedog