3 Way fridge not working due to angle of motorhome.

[Maitken1]

I thought I would post this in case someone else has the same problem. I have a Thetford 3 way fridge with automatic switching. It works fine except the other night we were parked for the night on a angle and didn't bother putting it on ramps to level up. The fridge stopped cooling but was still running. It was on 240V so I switched it to gas and it ran on gas but wouldn't cool. We have had the van for 3 years and this has never happened before. Once we drove off and were moving again, it worked fine and continues to do so. I had heard that if the angle is fairly steep that the fridge will stop cooling, but this is the first time it has happened to us. Clearly this is due to the angle of the van and therefore the fridge. So you do need to level the van as much as you can and particularly if it is a hot day and you park up for a few hours to go sightseeing, You wouldn't realise that it has stopped cooling even though you can here it running on gas. The angle wasn't particularly steep but is clearly enough to effect the fridge.

 

[GeoffnDee]

As I understand it ,Thetford 3 x way fridges are ok with up to 3 degrees of tilt and for Dometic 3 x way fridges it is up to 6 degrees of tilt.

 

[cmcardle75]

It's one of several reasons I decided to go compressor. I'm too lazy to level the van, the storage space is limited and I can think of more fun things to put in there. It's particularly bad at home, as the drive is on quite a slope, so there would be no pre-cooling the fridge before a trip with a traditional 3 way fridge.

 

[Sheddy]

In our old van it would only fail to work if it was sloping down on the front left all other levels were fine.