Refrigerator Woes...Finally Caught Up With Me!

[FlyboyTR]

My 2007 has the Norcold N300.3.

First, I am painfully familiar with how all this stuff works. Thankfully the only failure I have ever had was our 4 door refer in our Allegro Bus. Was covered/replaced under warranty. But I digress....I have been reading/searching all the refer stuff I can find on our amazing Forum!

I just returned from another 20 day 6K mile trip. Several days before leaving I was doing system checks. After one hour of refer time on shore power, I could feel the freezer bottom getting cold. Great! Next was the LP test. It was difficult to light (never had this problem...and yes the gas lines had been purged). On one attempt I heard a "waathump" sound as the burner lit...well that was new! Finally things caught and the needle barely made it into the green. Let go...and lost flame. Restart! ...I finally had to hold the pilot button for almost a minute before it would maintain a flame. I also noted that the needed did not move as far into the green as it had in the past. After an hour it was obvious things were cooling on LP so I shut it down. The little voice in my head kept telling me this would come back to bite me...

Every morning on the trip I had to spend extra time to get the LP to light. I did note that I had to turn the thermostat to colder to maintain 35 degrees while on LP. I use a remote thermometer that I can read from inside the TV (tow vehicle).

On the second to the last night out, the refer was at 55 degrees when we set up camp. Not good! Switched over the shore power and it only dropped it down to 45 degrees overnight. During the next day I watched as the temps slowly starting rising into the 70's while on LP. Upon arrival at the camp site I could smell LP that smelled like it was starving for air. I shut it down and switched over to shore power. Within a few hours the temps were down in the 30's. Excellent. At some point I had the refer door open and tripped on the rug and basically kicked the door really hard (hard enough to jar everything!). Noted after that the temps were starting to rise. Not good!

OK...back home. Plugged in the shore power and the unit started cooling and then quit. I noticed (for the first time) that I had almost zero amp draw on the a/c (110 volt) system! This is starting to sound like a loose wire(s) on the controller.

Today I have spent hours reading here. I believe my problem is two fold. I think the burner is shot, stopped up or both. New one is ordered and will be here Tuesday. In my research I learned about the loose connection problems with the connectors on the controller. Thanks to Bill and others for providing good reading material and documentation (Norcold PDF's) for all of us to glean knowledge from. I will do the wiring first then move on to the LP burner.

Sorry for the long diatribe...but I was in a typing mood and wanted to share. I will update my findings here as I move forward with the repairs. Thanks!