Lazy Daze Owners' Group

Diagnose and Repair OR Replace Refrigerator?

October 04, 2018, 04:47:21 pm

What would you do? My 1984 LD is getting life breathed back into her and not going to the boneyard. Right now she is in an RV repair place going over the house part. Among a long list of stuff, the refrigerator is not working. It does appear to be an original refer and I suspect that it has been used quite a bit in the past. Anyway, the shop wants to charge me $90 to diagnose it, which is fair but on the other hand I am thinking Why??? Should I just go for replacing it altogether? What would you do?

Re: Diagnose and Repair OR Replace Refridgerator?

Reply #2 – October 04, 2018, 05:16:59 pm

"Anyway, the shop wants to charge me $90 to diagnose it, which is fair but on the other hand I am thinking Why??? Should I just go for replacing it altogether? What would you do?"

I would think long and hard about how you intend to use your Lazy Daze.  If it is for short trips by yourself (or with pets), and your food needs are small and simple, I would just use a really top quality cooler until I was certain that a full-sized RV refrigerator would improve my life more than whatever else that same amount of money could buy.

If the refrigerator is clean and not damaged, i.e. the insulation is good, then you might try a hybrid method.  Freeze a huge block of ice in your home freezer, and put it in the bottom of your Lazy Daze refrigerator, and spot other frozen blocks or Blue Ice around in different places in the refrigerator, simulating a cooler.  Fill every crevice with something cold/frozen so that there is little air space.

This should last for several days, especially if you don't open it frequently - store your most needed items, like soda pop or ice water in a separate cooler, so that the refrigerator door stays closed as much of the time as possible. 

Forget about ice cream or cooling down leftovers.  Plan your menus around the least vulnerable foods you can think of - fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, cheeses, etc., and plan to stop at the grocery store every couple of days to replenish your fresh foods.  Hunks of deli meat such as ham, salami, roast beef, etc. keep well.  Just buy a slab instead of slices.

Items like catsup, relish, mustard, peanut butter, and yes, even milk, and especially coffee cream, will survive a long time in just a cool environment.

And, yes, I have actually done this.  Our refrigerator became recalcitrant on a three-month vacation trip, and I survived the last month of that trip with just a large-ish cooler and a smallish cooler.  An additional fact . . . we seldom eat out, so this inconvenience was there for every meal.  And we ate normally - our regular from-scratch meals every day.  No shortcuts with boxed/canned items.  I won't say it was pleasant, or even convenient, but it was doable, and not even terribly onerous once I got into the swing of it, and certainly preferable to trying to get it fixed on the road. 

Hint:  Reflectix is your friend !


Virtual hugs,

Judie  <-- Sierra Vista, Arizona
Adventures of Dorrie Anne | Photographing the West

Today:  Owl Totem
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Re: Diagnose and Repair OR Replace Refrigerator?

Reply #4 – October 04, 2018, 07:54:36 pm

As Kent says, there are additional tricks to making a cooler work wonders for short trips.

Before we had our Lazy Daze, we spent a very hot late August/September, 1987, in the Four Corners area in a non-air conditioned Volkswagen Westfalia with only a Coleman Cooler.  Yes, we had a built-in refrigerator, but it did not work well enough to use for its intended purpose, so I kept my cooking utensils in there.

The cooler sat right where the sliding door opened, so it got a good blast of heat multiple times a day.  To mitigate that onslaught, I put a (new) white, long-haired fuzzy bathroom rug on top of the cooler.  This white "fur" reflected the heat rays, and insulated the top of the cooler from heat.

If there was Reflectix then, we didn't know about it, but I did utilize doubled-up heavy duty aluminum foil for the same purpose.  I was careful to visualize where things were in the cooler, and then lift up only the side of the foil that was covering those goodies, leaving the rest of the items covered.  The ice was on the bottom, and there was a powder-coated cabinet wire shelf that I kept the food on above the ice.  Plastic or glass containers with tight-fitting tops will do wonders in keeping things fresh.  Do not leave your food in thin plastic bags.

Renewing the ice with blocks of ice was easier in those days, as there were dispensers outside of most stores in the Southwest areas, as it was a good seller!  There were cubes, too, of course, but unlike today, block ice was very popular - probably for much the same use we were making of it.  Tent camping was more widely seen then as well, and the tent campers' coolers were hungry for ice!

In later years, I kept a cooler in our auxiliary vehicle in much the same format, except that I put a double layer of Reflectix on the bottom, and then a layer of four half-gallon bottles of ice from my home freezer.  The the wire shelf with the food on it, followed by another layer of Reflectix.

Every morning I took out two of the ice bottles and put them in the freezer of the Lazy Daze, and took out the two from the day before, and changed out half of the bottom layer, alternating the four bottles - two by two.  This was the perfect place to store extra supplies of the not-too-vulnerable food items like spare chocolate bars, and fresh produce, while utilizing the regular refrigerator in the Lazy Daze for more vulnerable items.  We were pretty far away from anything but a high-priced community pick-up market, so being able to keep my supply of wholesome food at hand was a blessing, and kept us from having to drive an hour each way to resupply every day or two.

You will no doubt suss out what level of trouble you are willing to go to, and how much you are willing to spend to feed yourself - and . . . whoever is with you.  It's really pretty basic - we all want to eat!  ;->

   Virtual hugs,

   Judie

Re: Diagnose and Repair OR Replace Refrigerator?

Reply #6 – October 05, 2018, 01:18:52 am

If the original refrigerator, the 34 year old plastic interior is probably brittle, if not, consider installing a rebuilt cooling unit.
Normally I would not recommend this but there is a very good chance there isn't a replacement refrigerator that will fit without modifications to the cabinet.
Inside the refrigerator door is a tag with the model and serial number. Use this information to search for the dimensions of the refrigerator and then compare the measurements to available Dometic and Norcold refrigerators.
All of this information is easily available online.

Larry