Refrigerator Compressor Cleaning on 355

[gmac98004]

Hi Gang,

Its high time for us to clean and vacuum the compressor unit on our Norcold refrigerator.

After removing the screws around the black flange, the refer wants to pull straight....and I mean straight out!

The maple beauty cap prevents us from pulling beyond that cap.

Questions are: Can that maple cap in the photo be pried off without damaging the panel? Does the smaller cap on the inside of the Vberth need to be pried off first? Perhaps its covering some screws?

Any help or advice would be helpful and very appreciated. Surely our group has encountered this before!

Many Thanks, Greg

[km1125]

What actual model is that Norcold? Why do you think it needs to be cleaned? Many of the older models do not really have fins that need to be cleaned like a regular fridge. Their spacing between the tubes is much greater where it doesn't really trap dust or debris. But - that said - the model doesn't look like the ones I'm familiar with that had some vents at the base, so yours could be different.

Maybe it's just the angle of the pics, but I'm not seeing the conflict with the trim and being able to pull the fridge out. Is it that the bottom needs to lift over that trim at the base? And yes, they do need to be pulled out rather straight a bit before you can angle it at all.

[KyleR]

Just so I understand, once the screws are out you're saying there is no vertical movement at all?

[tomschauer]

I replaced my NO Cold fridge on my 355 last year. You need to remove that wood strip from the adjacent wall. It just tacked on by a couple finish nails.
Also, nothing really to clean on the condenser fins.

[gmac98004]

Hi All,

Thanks for the outstanding replies!

We've been out on a 10 day trip to the BC Gulf Islands. Not a day over 80 the entire trip but our Norcold was working hard to keep up. We had some temps inside the refrigerator at 45. Its the original DF-561.

Just thought that a cleaning of the compressor unit might be a good idea since its clearly never been done. Sounds like that may not be necessary and we just wait for the fridge to slowly die off af some point?

Thanks again for all of the assistance.

Regards, Greg

[KyleR]

You still may want to pull it to inspect the coils and tubing on the back. Ours (a NovaKool, not the Norcold you have, but I'm guessing similar) seemed to be working poorly and when I pulled it I found that nearly all the insulation on the lines had deteriorated and come loose. I called NovaKool and he said just remove all that and replace it and it would be like a new one. I kinda doubted him but did it anyway - and it started working great again - and that's been probably 2 years ago maybe. In addition, we had a weird water leak in our v-berth that we never could isolate or find. Turned out to the all of the condensation dripping from those frozen cooling coils and making it's way under the floor to the V-berth. Once I reinsulated the pipes it fixed that too!

I used a thin foam tape wrap product from Home Depot (or Lowes) that was sticky on one side. I cleaned the old stuff off completely and then wrapped two layers of that foam tape on all the tubing. I topped that off with a final cover of a flexible foam sleeve (kinda like a thin pool noodle) and it's worked great ever since. I'll try to find pics of what I used and update this post.

This might not be your issue, but it wouldn't hurt to check. Good luck!!

Kyle

[gmac98004]

Amazing help!

Thank you Kyle!