Refrigerator Moving Around

[George Bist]

George Bist, here again, looking for some great advice such as I've had in the past from you all. 2013 DS. We stopped for the evening and discovered that our refrigerator moved back into the enclosure and over enough that the refrigerator doors wouldn't fully open. I kinow that there is a metal bracket on top to stop it from tipping. Has anyone discovered how the fridge is supposed to be held in place? Has anyone else dealt with a moving refrigerator and gone to Home Depot for parts to DIY. I'd like to hear from anyone who has had the problem and actually fixed it. We traveled 80-E from Amana Colonies to Elkhart and the road was so horrible, huge potholes I couldn't avoid, that I am just lucky only my refrigerator moved, I guess.

[grindstone01]

Does you refrig have a outdoor access panel to get to the back side? I replaced our Norcold with a residential and secured the refrig by driving wood screws through the refrig bottom frame into the wood floor. You could also wedge some wood boards or foam blocks along the sides of the refrig so it doesn't move sideways. Note - if you use wood blocks, just smear some glue on them so they stay put when dried.

[Carefree]

George, not sure what model you have. We have an all electric coach with a Whirlpool fridge. On one of our last trips our fridge would move all the way out from its enclosure. It got so bad that my wife had to constantly push it back while I was driving until we made it to our next stop for the night.

The next day I pulled the fridge out and was shocked to find that the way Newmar holds the fridge in place is bound to fail. The use two L brackets on top of the fridge to anker the fridge at the top. Unfortunately, they just use glue/double sided tape to attach the L-bracket to the fridge and the other side of that bracket is secured with screws on a piece of wood right above the fridge.

Well, the double sided tape failed - which is not surprising given all the rocking while driving. I ended drilling holes into the top of the fridge and screw the brackets firmly onto the fridge. It won't go anywhere anymore.

Also at the bottom of the fridge, Newmar drilled holes into the tiles on either side of the fridge and just used a pin that went through the bottom section of the fridge and into those holes. The pin was way too thin to hold anything in place. Ours just bent enough that the fridge would just be able to roll around:-)

I used thicker pins (I just used fat screws that I found at Home Depot and which I cut to size).

I'm confident that our fridge will stay put now.

PM me if you need help with this project. The hardest and most time consuming part of the repair comes when you have to re-attach the upper brackets to the enclosure. It took quite some time to get it right:-)

[George Bist]

My previous post concerned my Maytag residential refrigerator in our 2013 4318 DS moving around in the cabinet, left and right, and forward, as we have been traveling across country on some of our pot-holed roads. We landed in a lovely RV park in Michigan where family lives with lots of tools and assistance, so here is the fix we used. It looks like it will work for us, but we won't be driiving for a few days!!

We noticed some sort of unattached "spacer bar" on the top of the refrigerator enclosure that was possibly designed to keep the refrigerator from leaning out into the room. There was nothing other than the refrigerator wheels and leveliing feet to keep the refrigerator from moving left or right. The whole set up was inadequate for us as the refrigerator moved in all three directions!

Photo 1 shows the right side of the refrigerator's wheel and leveling foot. The steel plate that those two items are attached to seems extremely strong and reaches from the right to the left side of the refrigerator. There is the same wheel and foot on the left side of the refrigerator. We determined there was enough room to add a 1-1/2" angle iron with two pre-drilled holes on each angle.

We first leveled the refrigerator using the leveling feet and with brute force we centered it in the enclosure. We used those screw feet to raise the plastic wheels off of the floor a bit.

We pre-drilled holes through the angle iron and through that steel brace. The drill bit was smaller in diameter than the number 10 self-tapping metal screws. The other part of the angle iron rests on the wood floor (not tile in our case) and we inserted two 1-inch wood screws to attach that part of the angle iron to the wood floor. Prior to doing any drilling we brought the slide in about 1-1/2 feet so we could estimate the thickness of the floor to ensure that we would not drill through the floor and have a screw that would scrape on the marble floor as the slide came completely in. We did the same to the left side of the refrigerator with the angle iron. We applied another 1-1/2-inch angle iron in the same way to the middle of the steel brace.

Photos 2 and 3 show the finished left and right side. The entire project didn't take more an hour once we assembled all the parts, etc.

We always appreciate the responses from you all on this site and hope this report may help some one in the future.

[Carefree]

That's a brilliant solution. That fridge should not go anywhere any time soon. Congratulations!

[Lckign]

I too intend to replace my crapbox Norcold with a resid refrig (I see LG has a great service record) my concern is similar to the topic here about movement but I can see how these solutions can work. My Other concern is for the shaking and its wear and tear on the refrig itself. Rough roads can shake up not only the shelves and contents but are there compressor and other parts that can be damaged as well?? Has any one used their refrig over rough roads for a number of years and come out ok? Any good experiences would be helpful to know about.