Refrigerator Maintenance

[Jeff]

Hi!
My three way refrigerator freezer works almost too well, a calibrated thermometer reads about -20F. However the cooler box appears not to be quite as good. All the seals on the door are good and it does cool to around 50 - 55 degrees. It seems the cooler box used to get much colder. Any ideas on what could be wrong?

Thanks in advance!
Jeff

[MASTERTECH]

need to know a few things how old is the fridge is there any difference from running on gas to 110 volt or 12 volt usually gas cools the best.
most problems with these types of fridges is a venting issue take the outside lower vent cover off and look up the back of fridge you should be able to see daylight out of upper roof vent if there is any blockage (leaves twigs whatever) remove that and leave the lower vent cover off for a couple of days and see if it gets colder in the food compartment if it does then a fan may need to be installed to help with moving the air up and out the upper vent
good luck hope this helps

[Jeff]

I normally run the unit on gas when on the road, I use 120v when parked at home and never run on 12v.

I'd say it runs about the same on gas or 120v.

I'll check out the vent system, but I don't understand why it was working well then between trips the efficiency in only the cooler box got worse. I would think if there was a vent problem, both the freezer and cooler box would be affected???

I'll let you know.

[MASTERTECH]

the freezer part of the cooling unit is at the top this is why the frezzer works better then the fridge part 80 percent of cooling is done there thats why these fridges need so long to get to working temp if the cooling doesnt improve with the lower cover off and the upper vent clear then there may be a blockage in the cooling unit at a point after the freezer part

[Nascarcamping]

Someone once told me that the fridges have a little " thingy: inside that measures the temps, his was either bad or got moved or something, can you expand on this :?:

[MASTERTECH]

the little thingy i think your talking about is the thermister on newer fridges its a black sensor in a norcold fridge and a white sensor on dometic fridges this device is temp. sensitive resister that tells the control board when to turn the fridge on or off they are mounted in the food compartment on the fins usually 5 or 6 fins in from the right if the sensor is moved more the left the fridge will run a longer cycle because the colsest area on the fins is the first or second fin at the right so mving it more left will take longer for the sensor to reach its off temp
hope thats understandable and helps you out