Friday, November 6, 2015

Short Delay

Launch Delay
We had the burner on the fridge cleaned on Wednesday, Norma loaded the freezer on Wednesday night and all seemed well. This morning (Friday) I got up early to turn the rig around and load the car on the dolly and noticed the 'check' light was on again! The food was still frozen but the inside walls of the fridge were room temperature. We quickly put all the food back in the house freezer. I called the repair shop and he said to bring it right in and they would look at it. I was there just after 8:00 AM and the tech diagnosed a blown re-igniter board. He changed it and told me he was 95% sure that would fix the problem. The main board was working fine and that narrowed it down to the re-igniter. He said we would know within 12 hours if it was going to fail again. If it does then it becomes a major diagnostic problem taking several hours so our fingers are crossed. Another failure may be the indicator that it is time for a new fridge. Paying six hours labour at $100 per hour plus parts is just not worth it when you still end up with a repaired ten year old fridge.
In any case, we do not want to be in the US or Mexico with a bad fridge and nowhere to keep our 50 pounds of frozen fish. We will stay an extra day and leave here Saturday, catching the Sunday morning ferry to Port Angeles. That will give the fridge 24 hours to tell us if there is still a problem. We will sleep in the rig tonight so we can keep an eye on the 'check' light. We will still make it to Algodones for my November 16 dental appointment. If all goes well.

9 comments:

  1. Get that chalk board eraser going, we do that a lot.
    Good luck with your fridge, we replaced ours at 12 years in Destin Florida.

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    1. We are starting to consider replacing it George. Sometimes Camping World has a "We will install anything for $25" sale so that would be a good time. The fridge is showing wear, it is the same fridge that the door fell off twice and I made roadside repairs to both hinges. They are $1,400 US ($1,860 Canadian) at Camping World, I can't find a price in Canada.

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  2. had our cooling unit replaced with labor it was about 1400 US... but I surely wouldn't want 50 pounds of fish to have to eat on a day that it goes out!

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    1. We had the cooling unit replaced on our last MH. It lasted for just under one year and was replaced on warranty but we had to pay labor and freight. A year and a half later the unit failed again and we replaced the fridge. They are expensive toys!

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  3. I gotta get into the RV fridge repair business. There really isn't that much to them. Seems an awfully odd coincidence for them to diagnose a bad board shortly after going in to have it cleaned. Not saying it couldn't happen, because the original bards do go bad...just seems odd. By the way, there is zero reason to replace the fridge if the cooling unit is still good. Everything else can be fixed relatively inexpensively and they're not that tough to work on. I would have thought you are handy enough with that kind of stuff...

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    1. It wasn't the main board, just the re-igniter board. It was $75 plus $75 labor. The things kind of scare me because I really do not understand how they work. I should get my hands dirtier. The tech said if this does not fix the problem then the next step is very labor intensive and he said it could be around 6 hours @ $100 plus whatever it takes to fix it. With new ones costing $1,500 in the US, it hardly seems worthwhile to repair an old fridge.

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  4. Croft,

    Kevin is right. There is not much to these RV refrigerators. You can replace all the guts for less than the price of a new fridge. An RV fridge is basically a insulated box with an exterior cooling unit and a couple of boards.

    Whatever your decision, good luck with the fix or new fridge.

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  5. Wonder if it sustained any damage when that box shorted out in Hope and is only now showing up.

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