We were in a warm place last weekend and one of our group members was having big problems keeping their Norcold 1201 cold. When they complained about it I took a look at it and their refer temp was 50F!
With the refer on the shady side of the coach.
I performed the Muddypaws Mod on their refer and checked on it the next morning and found it to be 41F. Still not good enough.
One of the things I noticed is that their refer appears to have at least 4 inches of dead air space between the cooling unit and the wall of the RV. There are also no baffles on the sides and I assume nothing at the top either.
I solved their problem (temporarily) by using a rather large fan to force more air into the coils.
Looking at the installation instructions it says there should be no more than 1 inch of air space between the coils and the wall, no space on the sides, and a baffle/guide at the top to smooth the flow of hot air out the roof vent.
For comparison: Our 1201 has 1/2 inch space, proper guides at the top and is mounted in a slide. It runs at 34F in the refer and -18F in the freezers on setting 3 most of the time. It was on the afternoon sun side and only got up to 40F when we were opening it every few minutes when cooking dinner. (I recently added 4 thermostatically controlled 120mm computer fans to the upper vent as an experiment and the major change I've seen is to it's recoverey time. It cools down much faster.)
OK, with all of that background here's the questions. Finally.
Would the amount of dead space behind the coils make that much difference? Is it something that my friend should get the manufacturer to fix?
A residential refer is out of the question. As is an Amish coil at this point. My friends travel a lot and are on a fairly strict budget.
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