davidmac Posted April 30, 2021 Share Posted April 30, 2021 Hi, just been checking the motorhome appliances, and found the fridge would not start up on gas. The display read 12.4v. I started the engine and found that it was working ok on the 12v. After 10 min switched the engine off the display read 12.9v and the fridge fired up on gas ok. Left it for an hour and had the same results. voltage had dropped but running the engine for 5 min and the fridge lit. Should the fridge need +12.5v to ignite or do I have a problem? Dometic 7556L AES. Regards David Extra details when trying to start fridge when the voltage is low no clicks from the igniter, when voltage higher clicks and pops straight away. Just tried again ,12.6v no problems Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keithl Posted April 30, 2021 Share Posted April 30, 2021 David, Does it depend on voltage or time? An AES fridge has an inbuilt delay after switching off the engine before the fridge will light on gas, is this what you are experiencing? From a Dometic AES fridge instruction book... "In order to prevent unintended switching to gas operation during refuelling, the electronic system starts gas operation of the refrigerator after the motor has been turned off for 15 minutes. During this period the appliance is ready for operation ("stand-by"). The temperature level LEDs do not light then while all other indicators remain active." Keith. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davidmac Posted April 30, 2021 Author Share Posted April 30, 2021 Hi I tried the fridge before starting the engine, no go for the fridge. when switched to auto there is a delay on running on gas, but the delay can be bypassed bu switching to gas manually. It just seems when the battery is below 12.5 the igniter does not work. The igniters on the hob click away whatever the voltage why the difference ,I don"t know. Regards David Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derek Uzzell Posted May 1, 2021 Share Posted May 1, 2021 Your Dometic fridge/freezer is probably a RM7555L model (not a 7556L) but that won’t affect the gas-ignition issue you’ve mentioned. There may well be a minimum voltage necessary to cause the gas igniter to spark on a brand-new Dometic RM7555L with a perfectly clean/adjusted gas-burner, but your Rapido motorhome is 14 years old. I would have thought that (even allowing for voltage drop) a battery with a 12.4V charge-state should be fine to cause the igniter to fire and, as you need a higher voltage than that for the igniter to spark, this suggests to me that you should check the gas-burner for cleanliness, particularly in the area where the igniter’s spark contacts. I’m not sure if the gap the spark has to traverse is adjustable, but (logically) the cleaner the igniter and burner are the lower the voltage needed to obtain a good spark. When did your fridge’s gas-burner last receive TLC? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davidmac Posted May 7, 2021 Author Share Posted May 7, 2021 Hi, the problem I thought I had seems to have sorted itself. I took Dereks' advice and gave the burner a good clean with compressed air and contact cleaner, it had been renewed in 2018 but was a bit dusty. It was still a bit flakey to start but after 4 or 5 startups each day for the last week it lights up first time every time now. I put the failure to ignite down to lack of use over the last year. The voltage issue was a bit of a red herring as the ignition module runs on 1.5v which would be the same as some manual versions that use a 1.5v dry cell battery for ignition. As Eric Morecambe once said, I got all the right numbers but not necessarily in the correct order, the model number is RMT7655L. Regards David Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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