All of a sudden our Norcold Fridge started indicating low voltage. Upon inspection I couldn't hear the auxiliary cooling fans running but the right pipes were warm and there was a slight air flow out the top vent. Measured the DC voltage at the board and it ranged from 12.8 VDC down to 11.8 VDC which didn't seem right. Checked the voltage at the converter and it was a solid 13.2 VDC. I was out of my league so called a mobile repair guy. He found out what I already new and suggested that either the Norcold control board was bad or the converter was going bad and had a lot of extra AC noise on the DC line. He called Norcold and they suggested powering the Fridge directly from the battery. I did and everything started working fine. So we guessed the converter was going south. Replaced the converter and found out we were wrong. It was definitely not the converter. SO when all other possibilities are eliminated go to the one you don't want to think about. No not the fridge is bad but why is the wire not providing the needed power. Of course that wire goes down through the belly of the whale and so I began tracing it back to find a cut in the wire. After emptying the basement and stretching every muscle I have I found the culprit. A splice in the wire that had corroded. Of course no on puts a splice in a wire do they? No matter how it got there a replacement with heat shrink made it all better and the converter company took the new one back with a 20% restocking fee. Just thought you might enjoy my journey and maybe learn a little bit about finding the unexpected.
Happy Travels
Larry and Jacki
The Bear II said
01:28 PM Jul 3, 2017
Thanks for sharing...I hate throwing parts at a problem but sometimes it's the only way for us shade tree mechanics to figure out what is wrong.
All of a sudden our Norcold Fridge started indicating low voltage. Upon inspection I couldn't hear the auxiliary cooling fans running but the right pipes were warm and there was a slight air flow out the top vent. Measured the DC voltage at the board and it ranged from 12.8 VDC down to 11.8 VDC which didn't seem right. Checked the voltage at the converter and it was a solid 13.2 VDC. I was out of my league so called a mobile repair guy. He found out what I already new and suggested that either the Norcold control board was bad or the converter was going bad and had a lot of extra AC noise on the DC line. He called Norcold and they suggested powering the Fridge directly from the battery. I did and everything started working fine. So we guessed the converter was going south. Replaced the converter and found out we were wrong. It was definitely not the converter. SO when all other possibilities are eliminated go to the one you don't want to think about. No not the fridge is bad but why is the wire not providing the needed power. Of course that wire goes down through the belly of the whale and so I began tracing it back to find a cut in the wire. After emptying the basement and stretching every muscle I have I found the culprit. A splice in the wire that had corroded. Of course no on puts a splice in a wire do they? No matter how it got there a replacement with heat shrink made it all better and the converter company took the new one back with a 20% restocking fee. Just thought you might enjoy my journey and maybe learn a little bit about finding the unexpected.
Happy Travels
Larry and Jacki