I know this can be a touchy subject here, with some folks in the "any RV is a huge waste of everything" camp, to others who enjoy everything from a $500 craigslist pop-up, to living full time in a big motorhome. But, if it applies to you, it might save you a fortune in needless repair bills.
We are on the motorhome end of the scale, and have spent about 80% of the last year living in ours. As many seasoned RVers have experienced, the other day our fridge decided that it was done with the whole "keeping food cold" gig. Now, this can get ugly since these things are complex, fairly unreliable, expensive to repair, and replace. They typically run on both propane and electric, use ammonia as a refrigerant, and have a whole lot of things that can go wrong. The symptoms were odd. The freezer was still going strong, the fridge was rapidly warming, and the drip tray in the fridge was overflowing.
A quick run through a google search, and all the usual RV forums was looking pretty grim, with the common consensus being that the cooling unit was shot, and it, or the entire fridge, would need to be replaced. I then started a new search based on the fact that the drain pan was overflowing. This is where I hit gold. I found a series of RV fridge self help videos on Youtube, under the name "Ford's RV Refrigeration" The very first one is a great. It's a Mustachian grade rant about how crooked the industry is, and how the answer to far too many simple RV fridge problems is "you have to replace the entire unit". I then went to their video on drain trays and found out that if the drain tube (discharging water from the tray inside the fridge to the exterior of the rig) is blocked, it can cause the fridge only, not the freezer, to get about nine degrees warmer.
I watched and learned a whole lot about the drain assembly, then checked ours. It was gummed up and needed to be cleaned. It took about five minutes to get everything flowing clean and clear. Since then, the fridge is running colder than it ever has, and I didn't spend a dime. I guarantee that, had we rolled in to a random repair shop, we had a good chance of being told the only fix was dropping $2k for a new fridge. The video series covers a lot more info. on maintenance and repairs and is well worth your time, if you own an RV fridge. I'm thrilled to have done a no cost repair, and saved a metric shit-ton of cash. Hopefully this info. will help somebody else. Happy trails......................
