While enjoying the beautiful fall weather in southern NM, the frig quit.  It worked fine for several days and then after one of the NM famous wind storms it stopped working.  Fuses, power, gas, thermocouple, all checked and nothing seems wrong, so we are grounded. No ammonia odor either.  Took it to the shop in Las Cruces, the freezer is cooling but not the frig.  We are meticulous about leveling even though we boondock extensively.  After a weekend of diagnostics we should hear something.  Beautiful weather last week and we are dying of hitch itch.

Keep you posted.

Larry and Jacki

With the connections cleaned up and some superficial cleaning of the burner system it slowly began to work again.  Odd but frig stayed warm until freezer was 20 degrees cooler.  72 hours on electric and then 24 hours on gas and it is still working fine.  Go figure.  Checked all the normal things with nothing wrong after a real slow cool down.  Maintenance guy says he sees that kind of thing occasionally.  He recomended we go fishin and check out.  We are out of here.

Keep you posted if there are further developments.

Larry and Jacki

Well after 6 days of working great the frig is DOA again.  Nothing on electric or gas even though they are heating the column.  We are meticulous about level and care but after 4 years the cooling unit seems to have quit circulating.  If so we are talking $1000 not in the budget to replace the cooling unit.  Just what we wanted for Christmas.

Hope you are staying on the road and the frig is working.
Larry and Jacki

Hi Larry and Jacki.
  You can buy a cooling unit from EBay for about $420.00 From the trouble shooting you did it sounds like you know your way around a RV frig. It's not that big of a job to replace a cooling unit. If you would decide to give it a try I would be glad to offer some help. You can check out my web site on the cooling unit that I changed out, and you can contact me from the site. www.rv-mobile-vision-quest.com Larry check blog entry July 20th-August 2, Good Luck Gummy.

-- Edited by Gummy at 15:06, 2007-11-05

We are having the opposite problem. We last used our fiver early October. We left mayo, syrup, mustard, etc in the frig as we are taking our last weekend trip this weekend before putting up the rig for the winter. I went out yesterday - everything is frozen solid. Not only in the freezer but in the refrig. We have a thermostat in the refrig that reads 20. Has anyone has this experience and what went wrong? Afraid to put anything in it for the weekend.

Well, the cooling unit on our Dometic refrigerator is gone.  It seems that it was under recall and even though the unit is about 3 1/2 years old and out of warranty there is a good possibility that dometic will replace the cooling unit but we will be paying the labor to change it out.  We are in the middle of Thanksgiving/family events so the 2+ weeks won't be too bad in waiting.  If that doesn't work out we will be thinking about the cost trade offs between a new refrigerator and replacing the cooling system.

Happy Holidays to all,
Larry and Jacki

Well Dometic wasn't interested in replacing the cooling unit when it was 4 months past warranty even though it was on recall.  After weighing the costs and warranty issues we opted to replace the whole unit and get the 3 year extended warranty.  Unit on order, decision made.  Probably less costly options were available as mentioned above but the total cost and warranty swayed us.

We will let you know how it turns out.  With luck it should be ready by the week after Thanksgiving.  Good thing we keep a "maintenance reserve" in our budget.

Larry and Jacki

The new refrigerator is in and working.  Now we can get back on the road.  One more event dealt with in our RV life.

Happy Holidays,
Larry and Jacki

Our Dometic frig went out yesterday. We noticed the freezer wasn't keeping things frozen. Then we opened the door and smelled ammonia. We are not on the recall list, Our 3 year warranty will be up in Feb. The real problem is we are in MX and we can't get it fixed until we get back in the states in April. Dometic said they would honor the warranty when we get back to the states. But in the meantime we won't have a refrigerator for 3 months. We are heading into Puerto Vallarta to Sam's Cub and Home Depot to see what they have for sale. But even a college dorm type frig is going to be a hassle with a very small freezer and since we go into PV only every 2 weeks. Guess we will have to fight the traffic more often now.

85 degrees in Puerto Vallarta
Tinka and Rick

-- Edited by Tinka and Rick at 08:04, 2007-12-13

Hello Tinka and Rick. A word of caution on those small refrigerators, they are prone to over heating. If that's the way you go make sure that it gets plenty of air around the back of it. If you could get a cooling unit shipped to you it's not that big of a job to replace one. If you need help or have questions contact me from my site, I'll be glad to help. Gummy

Thanks, Gummy, for the warning, information and help.  We appreciate it.  Having something mailed and delivered here in MX is very slow and very expensive.  If we installed the coolant unit ourselves, it might void the warranty.  We will go into Puerta Vallarta to Home Depot and Sam's Club to see what they have for sale today.  Then we will decide. Thanks again.

Tinka and Rick

83/64 in Puerta Vallarta today.

I joined the Dometic piece of junk club too. Bought a used 05 Montana Big Sky with Dometic 2862 Fridge in Dec. Seller took $1k off price as Fridge just died. Ammonia leak around burner. Yellow dust and we all recognize the smell of ammonia. Of course as the second owner, Dometic could care less, even though not quite 3 years old. My first personal introduction to crappy RV manufacturers. My solution, replaced with $348 Whirlpool apt size fridge (paid a lot less on sale). Unfortunately, 24" wide for Dometic and Whirlpool are not quite the same, so I had to sand down the wood frame to fit the new fridge. Swapping the door hinges was the hardest part. Its much lighter, significantly larger inside, cools down in less than 45 minutes, and is frost free. If anyone needs some used Dometec 2862 parts, contact me. I'm glad to recycle parts in exchange for S&H. Pics on RV.net Fifth Wheel Forum under "Domestic Fridge..." thread.

RRman wrote:

My solution, replaced with $348 Whirlpool apt size fridge (paid a lot less on sale). Unfortunately, 24" wide for Dometic and Whirlpool are not quite the same, so I had to sand down the wood frame to fit the new fridge. Swapping the door hinges was the hardest part.
Its much lighter, significantly larger inside, cools down in less than 45 minutes, and is frost free.

---

I think that you are going to be a lot happier with your compressor type fridge. It isn't going to be fussy about being level, and will cool down very quickly on an inverter or generator power. It will still stay cold for a long time, when it doesn't have any power, and as you said, the inside is bigger.
I found the hardest part was installing door locks for traveling.  Happy Trails, Penny, TX


-- Edited by LakeConroePenny at 15:54, 2008-01-03

On our first trip, the doors stayed closed all by themselves as others have reported. I do plan to get the 'Refrigerator bars' for at least the freezer to make sure some heavy load doesn't shift and cause a 'catastrophe'.

We've had two problems with our Dometic during the 14 years we've had the 5er.  First the computer went out (freezer would work but not the refrigerator side), replaced the computer (controller) with a Dragon (brand name) unit. 

Second problem a few years later, ammonia smell, refrigerator and freezer not working.  Replaced the cooling tubes.  All has been ok for the past 5 years...knock on wood.  

We do use a fan to exhaust the heat from behind the refrigerator out through the roof vent.  Seems to help on really hot days.

Well the Dometic Refer died while we were at Dead Horse point state park in Moab, Utah. Cooling unit was leaking the good ole ammonia smell was a dead give away. Ordered a new cooling unit from Pines RV refrigeration on ebay and had it shipped to our sons house in Colorado where we were headed. The hardest part of changing out the cooling unit is getting the old one off the back. The cooling coil is encased in foam and it is a real chore getting it off. After finally getting it removed and the new one installed refer is working great and DW is happy. You have to send the old unit back to activate the warranty and get the one hundred dollar rebate. They make it easy to ship back you just put the old unit in the box the new came in and stick on the shipping label that they send and drop off at a UPS service center. Net cost after rebate is $425.00 plus shipping about one third the cost of a new refer.