Warning re Norcold Recall Box

[RayBH]

I apologize for the length of this post but I hope it may benefit somebody.

Near the end of our first trip in our recently new to us 2003 Monaco Windsor coach, our Norcold fridge quit operating. I spent the evening on the internet reading the postings on various sites discussing the Norcold refrigerator issues. The next morning , which as a Friday, I called the mobile service tech that had fixed something else for me only a couple of days earlier and he arrived in mid-afternoon. He looked at the cooling unit, said there was no evidence of any leakage and concluded that the "recall box" had been tripped by some moisture from the small wind and rain storm of the previous night. This made some sense as I had read several posts about how moisture from washing their coaces had tripped the recall unit on the posters' units. So he reset the recall box with a magnet, showed me how to do that if it tripped out again and left saying he felt we shouldn't have any more trouble.

Later that evening the fridge shut down again. So I went out, bought a magnet at a nearby Lowes and reset it again (several times) but it would not stay on for long. In the morning I tried to reach our tech but he was away for the weekend. So we bought foam coolers and ice to keep our food cold and spent much of the weekend reading whatever we could find to become more informed about the Norcold refrigerator issue. What we found was a lot of posts by people who had very unpleasant (some quite frightening) experiences with their Norcold fridge. Also, a number of posts referring to the recall box as a "P O S". There were also some posts that indicated if there was no evidence of a leak in the cooling system, the recall box could be bypassed (which is very easy to do) until a new recall box could be obtained. I thought about doing that but we weren't being really inconvenienced and I was not comfortable that I fully knew what the consequences might be, so I did not bother doing that.

Our tech was able to get to us mid-afternoon on the Monday. He looked the cooling unit over again, concluded there was no evidence of any leakage, so he bypassed the recall box to start the fridge. He left saying he thought he had a replacement recall box at his shop and, if so, he would be back with it in the morning, if not, he would order a new one for us. Since I had already contemplated doing the bypass myself, I was not at all concerned when he did it.

There was a pot luck supper scheduled that evening in the park, but, since we hadn't had the fridge operating my wife did not have something fresh to contribute, so we decided to eat in our coach. It was just getting dark when I remembered I hadn't retracted the awning and when I went outside to remove the wind braces, I noticed a light behind the grill covering the fridge cooling unit. A fire was just starting. It was quite small but it still took several good squirts with the fire extinguisher to finally get it out. We think we were EXCEEDINGLY fortunate that we did not suffer any damage to the coach, or worse.

From this experience , I have reached the following conclusions that I would like to pass along to anyone else who has a Norcold fridge and the recall box shuts it down on them:
1) The recall box may be a P O S (as many have described it) from the perspective of its' longevity, reliability, and being prone to moisture, but it is not meant to enhance the operation of your fridge. It is a SAFETY DEVICE meant to PROTECT YOU if your fridge develops the common fault that Norcolds are prone to. In our case the recall box performed its duty perfectly by shutting down the fridge every time I manually reset it. It was the human error of bypassing the the safety device that resulted in our fire, not any fault of the recall box.
2) You really can't be sure there are no leaks in the cooling unit unless you strip away the metal cover and the fibreglass insulation (at least that was what was on mine) that cover the cooling unit where the leakage takes place. There was no "yellow dust" on mine even after the covering was stripped away.
3) The exceptionally small benefit one will gain from bypassing the recall box to restart the fridge, while you wait for a replacement box to arrive, is infinitely small compared to the potential risk you are taking of having a fire. The possibility that you will be as lucky as I was to be virtually right there when the fire starts is exceptionally small. We could have lost our whole coach and been without insurance because the fail-safe device provided by the manufacturer for the sole purpose of preventing a fire had been disabled. That risk/reward ratio just does not make any sense to me.

["007"]

Welcome to irv2 Ray.
The box was doing its job for you and there have been others that have bypassed it and got away with it.
Your wife intuition paid off eating in that night and you caught what you said a very bad situation that could have been worse.
The Norcold write ups on this forum have gone back to 2007 and its been something RVer's have been living with since, many have removed them and others have replaced the faulty cooling coil with the Amish unit. which helps if people do a lot of dry camping.
Thanks for your heads-up post and hope you resolve the continuing problem with the fridge.
Enjoy the forums.

[HicksRA]

Not to veer too far from the subject, but the service tech could have set himself up for a big lawsuit.
I've added an ARP monitor to my Norcold which does a much better job than the recall box.
ARPrv | RV Refrigerator | RV Fridge Control | Install by Cooling Unit | RV Fire

[jesilvas]

Originally Posted by RayBH

2) You really can't be sure there are no leaks in the cooling unit unless you strip away the metal cover and the fibreglass insulation (at least that was what was on mine) that cover the cooling unit where the leakage takes place. There was no "yellow dust" on mine even after the covering was stripped away.

THIS! I can not believe the "technician" did this. It is strictly stated in the recall instructions to not bypass, and to check the cooling unit behind the insulation, and check it with litmus paper for the acid. Seems like he didn't do that.

I'd be perusing him for something, definitely. It gives technicians who care about customers a bad name.

[RV Wizard]

Hello Ray and welcome to irv2. We are glad to have you join us and we look forward to reading of your adventures and experiences. I am sure you will enjoy our website and forums. Good luck, stay safe and keep us posted.
Hopefully the technician has learned his lesson as well; you never by-pass safety devices and leave them.

[CLIFFTALL]

Thanks for posting this. As hard as some of have tried to convince others not to do this , it still takes place. 😞

[Dutch Star Don]

This si a tough situation. There were sooo many failures of those control boxes that it was ridiculous. People leave on a three week trip and two days in, the stupid box fails, leaving you to wonder if its the box or the refer. I think Norcold got off way too easy regarding a legitimate fix for this leaking refers. I didn't want to see them driven out of business, but the bypass boxes were/are junk.