Keeping your older refrig going....

[robert claus]

I revived my refrig this year. It's the original Dometic, so it's 18 years old. A couple of years ago, it became erratic. It became reliably unreliable. Working at first on an trip, and then warming up. Ended up hauling a cooler and ice for when ever it happened. Sometimes it seemed to work only on electric. It would always seem to cool down quickly on gas, but then warm up. I thought it had to be a thermostat failure problem, and started looking up how to replace it. It seemed the thermostat would take a set, and not respond to warming. It always chilled the cooling fins inside the fridge a bit, even when it was running warm, so I know the burner was still working. I'd done all of the cleaning tips for the gas operation. What I realized is that I never turned the thermostat to the 0 position. I always left it at 3-4, for years. I started turning the thermostat to 0 every time I turned the unit off. This seemed to allow the thermostat to recover, so that it could relax between uses. No problems at all this year. Granted, we didn't use the trailer until the Fall, but then had multiple weekends where it was used for 3-4 days. Each time I reset the thermostat to 0 when turning it off, and it became reliable again. Just thought I'd share......

[Mike1997]

The Dometic Royal 3way frig freezer in my AS is original to 1997. It has an ice maker too but it never worked and not really needed as I have a countertop ice maker that's faster and more efficient. At one point it stopped working on gas and it needed a new control board. No problems since. Just moved out of it this month after 2 years full timing. I did install a solar exhaust fan vent cover same year the control board was replaced. Works excellent!!

[AtomicNo13]

The fridge in our 91 classic is original. My obstacle is a failure of the reignitor every couple of years.
The reignitor is now an obosolete part.
My solution is to cruise the pile of old fridges at rv shops and harvest each one I can find.
So far I have amassed a dozen or so. I test each one for functionality... either they work or dont.
This little effort has saved me from replacing an otherwise working well fridge!
Having a small collection of rare parts is very easy to do!