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Topic: Fridge on Gas

madasaman

05/4/2012 at 3:34pm
Location: Wales
Outfit: Volvo XC60 R Design

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Just collected my caravan from the yearly service, again the fridge was picked up as a problem. Engineer said they couldn't get fridge to stay lit. This was brought up last year as well. We didn't get it serviced as we very rarely used it on gas and decided to leave it until we went away and tried it ourselves. Used it on gas in Italy with no problems. Drove from service yard to storage, about 1/2 mile and turned on gas. Lit the four cooker burners first to get the gas into the system and then lit the fridge, waited the requisite 20 secs for thermocouple to operate and it stayed lit. This a con or what?

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73 going on 25
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder

Jax365

05/4/2012 at 4:49pm
Location: south cheshire
Outfit: VW Caddy Maxi

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The chap who came to install and service mine said it wasn't working on gas, but when I had a go it worked fine!

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Opensauce

05/4/2012 at 5:57pm
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Not necessarily a con, it could be thermocouple playing up & may need changing eventually. As you point out best procedure when arriving onsite is to turn on gas & wait a few mins before lighting fridge.

If you run fridge on gas a fair bit, the burner will need cleaning out from time to time & if fridge is not used on gas, burner can fill up with fluff/dead insects & might be difficult to light.

You can normally access burner by removing lower vent grille from outside of 'van & clean out with a small paint brush & meths & its good to blow out with airline if you have access to one.

rose+max

06/4/2012 at 12:04am
Location: Nottingham
Outfit: Swift Challenger 530

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from Tentz(You can normally access burner by removing lower vent grille from outside of 'van & clean out with a small paint brush & meths & its good to blow out with airline if you have access to one.)

That's a good bit of advice, I didn't know that, I'll have a try to see if that's the problem with my fridge. It's stopped working on gas, sparks but wont light, used to be fine but always had a low flame. works fine on electric.
You do pick up some good tips off this forum.

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Jax365

06/4/2012 at 9:40am
Location: south cheshire
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I dangle the hoover tube nozzle inside the air vent from the outside, and also hoover underneath to the back on the inside. Spider webs/dust build up over winter, but that usually fixes it.

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SteamDriven

06/4/2012 at 10:12am
Location: Gloucestershire
Outfit: SunnCamp Festiva

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Ah ha, the engineer said "they couldn't get fridge to stay lit" not that "you couldn't get fridge to stay lit". You've got the knack, they haven't (probably means they're not engineers then).

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madasaman

06/4/2012 at 12:36pm
Location: Wales
Outfit: Volvo XC60 R Design

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Quote: Originally posted by SteamDriven on 06/4/2012
Ah ha, the engineer said "they couldn't get fridge to stay lit" not that "you couldn't get fridge to stay lit". You've got the knack, they haven't (probably means they're not engineers then).

Wow it's true, I do have the knack and I was an engineer for 40 odd years at sea LOL

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73 going on 25
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder

DaveCoaches

06/4/2012 at 4:47pm
Location: None Entered
Outfit: Coachman Pastiche

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One thought occurs to me. Maybe the engineer couldn't get it to go out when turned off. I had this with mine. I am not sure of the model, but I have a rotary selector switch to select gas, mains or 12 volts or off. When I turned it off or onto gas or electric, the gas would not extinguish. It turned out that the switch was not switching it on correctly and someone had put a jumper wire across the back of it.

When I removed the jumper wire, the fridge would not stay alight unless I held the switch hard against the stop. I opened the switch up and filed one of the cams down inside and it cured it. I am sure I found the solution on here or some other caravan forum.

madasaman

06/4/2012 at 5:07pm
Location: Wales
Outfit: Volvo XC60 R Design

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Nope he told me he couldn't get it to stay alight, but when i tried it 20 mins after i got it to stay alight first time.

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73 going on 25
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder

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