Refrigerator sometimes not working

[saerdna]

I thought we had our first honest-to-gosh failure - the refrigerator stopped working (or, more accurately, it wouldn't turn on when we prepared for our weekend outing). The light turns on (solid green), the heating element is heating (either gas or electric), power seems OK (both 12V coming onto the control board, and 110V, I checked both fuses on the control board, but the refrigerator stays at room temperature. I tried any number of power-off/power-on, engine off/engine on combinations with no luck.

So, we went off for a nice weekend trip with a lot of ice in the refrigerator, and using the freezer as storage. Just for chuckles, I decided to turn it on while we were camped, only to find, a few hours later that we had frozen our storage, and the refrigerator worked perfectly. So far, the refrigerator is still working.

I'm not sure how to try to fix something that is working. Has anyone had any experience with loose connectors, or anything else that might cause this?

This is a Norcold N611 in a 2015 Thor Vegas.

Thanks,
Andy

[Jegdrum5050]

I always turn refrigerator on one day before I put supplies in it. I also put ice in freezer and soda cans in refer part. Usually takes several hours to get cold. Normally the freezer will get cold first then the refer compartment Hope this helps you.

[JamieGeek]

The refer in our 24.1 seems to be really sensitive to being off-level. On our last camping trip we had it precooled to proper temperature loaded it up and off we went.
A few hours into the 2nd day of camping and we noticed the refer was getting warm. Checking the camper I noticed it was a bit nose down (not really much to notice without using a level). Put some blocks under the front wheels and the refer started to work again.

[gmc]

Found same thing with my 2014 Hurricane - MUCH more sensitive to 'off-level' conditions than my older unit...
Took a couple of visits to service (where it of course worked perfectly... the last started with the fridge HOT inside in my driveway - working perfectly less than an hour later after the drive to dealer...

[EA37TS]

My prior class c with a Dometic RV fridge would often take 48 hours to cool down. The second season I owned it I read about air circulation inside the refrigerator, especially around the cooling fins, so I bought a small battery operated fan like in the link below. After using the fan the fridge would cool in about 12 hours and I never had any issues with it continuing to cool. I used that fan for two seasons on one set of D cell batteries.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002N5W8Q4...K5QE62FSVQ8YHB

[saerdna]

That's interesting. At home, the RV sits on our driveway at a bit of a rakish angle - which is when the refrigerator wouldn't run. At the campsite, I want to be basically level, which is when it was working just fine. I'll have to experiment a bit.

Thanks for the tip. I hope that is all that is going on.

-Andy

[Dan9841]

Originally Posted by dstankov

My prior class c with a Dometic RV fridge would often take 48 hours to cool down. The second season I owned it I read about air circulation inside the refrigerator, especially around the cooling fins, so I bought a small battery operated fan like in the link below. After using the fan the fridge would cool in about 12 hours and I never had any issues with it continuing to cool. I used that fan for two seasons on one set of D cell batteries.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002N5W8Q4...K5QE62FSVQ8YHB

Dave, I swear you are better than Macgyver. Love reading your posts!

[saerdna]

Thank you all for the great insight. In my case, it really does appear that the refrigerator does not like to be at an angle. Now that it's parked back on an incline in the driveway, it has stopped working. So, at least in our case, if you want refrigeration, you can't tilt the machine.

Andy & Renee
2015 Thor Vegas

[srolfe]

I always light the stove before running the fridge on gas. It seems to resolve problems I have had in initially starting the fridge.