Vic Harder said:
Good questions and approach Russ. Maybe Dawn is opening her fridge more often to take out adult beverages to help soothe her frustration.
Hahaha!
Russ, I think you might have hit the nail on the head. Today, Bill and I went to Lowe's in search of new door seal for my fridge. I have had absolutely no luck finding actual replacement seal - called Camping World, camper repair places, Dometic... no one could help. Dometic told me it's actually in the 'truck fridge department' (or somesuch) and gave me a different number to call. I repeated the number back to the lady, said thank you and hung up. The number was bunk! LAME!
I called a "truck refrigerator" place, and he told me that this model - the CR-80 is a kind of unusual one to get utilised, and more often used is the CR-50 and the CR-65, so I probably wouldn't be able to find parts for this one. Double LAME!
We picked up some foam window sealant in the right width and height.
Cut it to fit:
It's snug and I have to make sure there's a second "click" for the fridge to be really shut. I am hoping that it'll compress down a little so that proper shutting is a little easier, but it works fine.
After a few hours, I checked the temps and moved my fridge temp from 6.5 to 5.
After dinner, I moved it from 5.5 to 4.5 and at 9:10pm temps are reading 32 in back and 37 at the door.
Of course, it's nice and cool outside, but still... I'm feeling very positive about this fix.
I'll report back tomorrow afternoon and see how it's doing.
Tonight, I was thinking that it probably has been a big problem if indeed the fridge has been having to cycle more often because of a crap door seal. It seems like it's been a confluence of things: no charging from battery and crap seal from the get-go.
We'll install the battery separator tomorrow, so I'll finally be charging while driving.
I'll hafta find someone else to install the fancy new MPPT Controller, as it's a project bigger than Bill wants to tackle.
And that's fine - he's helped a ton!
And so have y'all! Keep fingers crossed!
Hopefully, I'll feel like making a new trip report blog post soon. I'm overdue!