JimPeoria

Accumulator comes pre charged and you should not have to fool with that side of the unit. It will not make any difference to the flow volume just reduces the surges. And makes it so the pump doesn't have to start at the moment water is turned on. Good investment in any water system motorhome or brick and mortar house.

Oregon's coast hiway is easy enough but in a 40 footer with a toad it is slow and nerve wracking in places. Lots of really tight curves and very slow traffic around Newport/Lincoln City, but you can get through it, but I suspect it may take longer than a week to make the full trip if you do any sightseeing along the way. A lot of the northern section is really not very close to the coast. Lots of beautiful sights along the way. Would be better to take an extra week and take it easy and get to enjoy some of the shopping and fun stuff to do along the way. Be sure and stop in just south of the bridge in Newport and see the aquarium which is also right by a nice RV park that is right in the bay. I have been the full length of Oregon with my 40 foot pusher with a toad and it can be done just takes a while. Not something you want to do all in one day unless you have to. Just to many things to do and see along the way. Also make sure you have everything strapped down because lots of rocking roads side to side and some really narrow spots. Good luck.

I will give you some sound advice here that you will wonder why they didn't do it that way to begin with. First thing to do is measure the size of your fridge, how big is the hole it goes into. Then armed with those measurments, aleo see if there is room to expand the hole, go to your favorite appliance store and take your tape measure and find a fridge that will fit into your hole. It may stick out into the room a bit further and you may have to remove a couple inches at the top to make it fit but I bet you can do it. Rehang the doors, plug it in and you are good from now on. You will have no further fridge problems. You will have nearly twice the interior space to use and will have only spent 1/4th the amount you will end up wasting on the Norcold and still never be satisfied with it. I have been there and done it and not looked back. I live in my coach full time year around and I wouldn't have another RV type fridge if they gave them to me. The replacement cost of your fridge is close to $4000 and that doesn't include labor. It is nearly $2500 just to replace the cooling unit plus labor. You can run your gen-set going down the road for years and still be ahead of the game. Or you can add another battery and invertor for the fridge but really not necessary. We have had ours now for almost 3 years and simply love it. Water and ice through the door lots of room we can put 4 gallons of milk and 2 half gallon jugs of juice just on the top shelf. 2 shelves and 2 drawers below the top one. We have a 7500watt diesel gen-set that will run all day on about a gallon of diesel. We are nearly always hooked up to shore power when parked. Just not worth the hassel and expense to fiddle with the RV fridge. We got our fridge at Sears on sale for around $1300 and I installed it myself. Gave away the Norcold if they would get it out of the coach and my Sears unit in. If you can find a real fridge that will fit by all means make the change you will never regret it.

Did you ever get this problem solved??? It doesn't hurt anything to go up a bit with your replacement fuse. If it was a 10 amp one you could go to a 15 amp or even a 20 amp one without hurting anything. Note from moderator: Can't say I would recommend replacing with a higher amp fuse. Best advice is to determine the cause of the fuse blowing. The fuse is there for a purpose. Doubling it's capacity may only mask the problem or worse, lead to a fire. Brett. Best thing to do really is to just replace the fridge completely with a residential fridge. Sure it is only 120 volts but you are plugged in all the time when parked anyway right and you can run the generator for 15 minutes every hour while on the road just to maintain cool within the box. You will gain nearly double the cubic footage of space inside and you can stop worrying about if the fridge is keeping cool enough. This is what we did after 2 failures of our 4 door Norcold fridge. After several calls to Norcold they finally told me they didn't know how to keep those fridges working. Save yourself a lot of trouble and just replace it with a real fridge and be done with it.

Look at some of the Winnebago DP that are available. Not sure what price range you are looking at but 2005's are in the $150,000 range now and maybe even cheaper depending on model and options. Very well built and good solid dependable coaches. Take any coach you are interested in out and drive it 10 or more miles on both city and open roads. Ask if you can keep it over a weekend or a couple days at least and get it inspected by a pro. Anything you get this old will be out of warrenty but you may be able to get an extended warrenty on it for a bit more money and it is well worth it.

I will go along with most of the posts here. We got a new 36 foot unit with a Workhorse chassis with the 8.1L V8 that had plenty of go to it on the flat but not much going up the mountains. It was noisy and you never relaxed while driving it. Co pilot wanted to try it out one time and nearly put us in the ditch and she was done, has never even hinted that she wanted to try again. We now have a 2005 Winnebago DP with lots of power (400 hp Cummins). It is so easy to drive and we can talk without screaming our lungs out. Still haven't convinced the co pilot to give it a try but know she would have no problems. We average about 8 MPG and change oil and filters once a year or every 12 to 15 thousand miles. Once you go DP you will never be satisfied with a gas rig again. Our rig weighs in at around 38,000 pounds and we tow a 2011 Kia Soul for another 4000 pounds. Really never feel the Soul back there. I set the cruise control at 60 and have to turn it off to take some of the corners going up the passes here in Oregon. If we could hang on and didn't mind all the stuff falling on the floor that we didn't tie down, it would take them at 60 and never slow down. If you can afford it at least take a test drive in one and see for yourself the difference. Oh and for God's sake if you are planing on full timing pay attention to TV location, you may spend a lot of time looking at it. Also function of the floor plan, does it have enough food storage and places for cooking pots and pans, dishes and so forth. you are going to be in there full time so you need to know you will be comfortable. Just like buying a house it needs to fit your needs. Also, it is possible to have a real household fridge installed if not already in there. Get that if you can because it will save you big headaches down the road and lots of money. Replacement cost for the largest Norcold is close to $4000 New cooling unit for same fridge is close to $3000. Capacity of the Norcold is a bit over 12 cubic feet. You can get a nice house fridge from Sears for under $1500 and it is over 20 cubic feet in capacity and will be frost free with ice and water through the door. With extended warranty if it fails you can replace it just about anywhere there is a Sears store. Our coach even has a dishwasher under the stove top which really saves the co pilot a lot of work. We also changed the gas cook top to an electric one. Only thing we have left that is gas is the furnaces and water heater. We have a heat pump for when temps are above 40 degrees and it also keeps us cool when they get above 80. This all helps make the LP last a lot longer. Water heater is also electric so we turn gas side off when plugged in.

Yep that is about the same as what ours looked like, except we had no vent stack. Just the inside of the cabinet behind the fridge. Our fridge was in a slide room so not possible to have a vent stack even. Makes me miss sleeping at nights wondering what other crazy ideas some engineer or designer has laid for us to fall into. Have to think that to be a coach designer you first must not have a lick of common sense. Sure looks like that is what we are getting these days. I am a firm believer in the theory that all coach designers and engineers should have to live in one full time for at least one year preferably longer. Maybe just maybe they would start coming up with floorplans that actually work for full time living. Jim

Unless you are into lots of boondocking the best thing you can do is replace the Norcold with a Kenmore or other fridge that suits your taste and size. After mine failed twice and being told by Norcold that they wouldn't pay for the second repair, my warrenty paid for the first cooling unit change at nearly $3000 worth, and being told by Norcold's engineer that they couldn't make those units work either and were discountinued, I got out my tape measure and sized up the space and went to Sears and measured fridges till I found one I could make fit and swapped them out. I might add here the fridge from Sears cost $1300 a new 4 door unit from Norcold is in excess of $4000 and does not include installation. Went from a bit over 12 cubic foot cooler to 21 cubic feet of real refridgeator. We live in our coach full time and it just didn't make sense to put up with the small size and poor quality of temprature control. We are plugged in nearly all the time except when we are actually on the road and then we just fire up the generator. I can afford a lot of diesel to run the genset for the cost of spoiled food and repairs to the Norcold. If your fridge is in a slide room like ours was when I removed the old unit I noticed a badly charred area above where the exhaust stack ends. Could have been very close to a fire at times I am sure. We are so glad we made this switch and I know anyone who spends much time in their coach will also. You will spend far less time fussing with the unit and when you go shopping you can buy a weeks worth of food and put it all in there and not worry about how much you will have to throw out before the weeks is out. Our old Norcold could bearly hold 3 gallons of milk and 3 days worth of food. Now we can put 4 gallons just on the top shelf and nearly 2 weeks worth of food in the rest of the fridge. Push comes to shove you can always add a battery and an invertor if you don't like to run your genset on the road. On cool days when we travel if we are not on the road for more than a couple hours we don't run the genset and the fridge stays cold. Like any household fridge they should keep safe cold for a couple hours if you leave the door shut. Then run the generator for long enough for the fridge to cycle through a cool down time. Any coach that has room for a 4 door fridge should have been built at the factory with a household refridgerator installed. I see more and more larger coaches are coming that way so the message is getting through. Jim