Strange fridge problem

[Philip M]

I've recently bought an Eriba 320 which was manufactured in 2021 but for various reasons has only been used twice and the fridge, a Dometic RM5330,  had never been used on gas until I bought in June this year.

On the first couple of trips the fridge went out once every day over a four day period. On the next outing it ran for five days without error. On a further occasion it went out daily again, but then ran for four days and so on over several outings adding up to 23 days in all. Of the 23 days it's failed on eight of them.

I have been exchanging numerous texts with a retired Dometic gas engineer who has very kindly been trying to help me, but he hasn't been able to come up with a reason for such erratic behaviour. However, I have been able to amass some circumstantial evidence as pointer to what might be happening.

I've been wracking my brain to try to think what could cause it to run for 120 hours without error and then have three days where it fails every day.

1. It only fails in the afternoon.

2. It's always on full flame when it fails, and relights immediately.

3. It has never failed at night.

4. It's virtually new and completely unused.

And then it occurred to me. It only fails when the sun is on the front of the van. If the van's facing North, or the weather is dull it works perfectly. In other words if the gas locker is in the shade.

Perhaps being an Eriba and having an aluminium body is something to do with it, or maybe the fixed 30 Mbar Cavagna regulator, which the sales people fitted new when I bought it, is somehow at fault, I don't know. I would be very pleased to hear if anyone here has had a similar experience or has any thoughts to what is causing this behaviour. Thanks.

[Derek Uzzell]

The large Dometic RM7651L AES fridge/freezer fitted to my 2005 Hobby T600FC motohome used to occasionally fail to relight when running on gas. There was no pattern to this behaviour, but I noticed that a couple of wires that plugged into a module on the fridge's rear did not look 'tight' in their sockets. After I had firmed up the wires' connections, the problem did not reappear. (Possibly sheer coincidence or the effect of the repeated curses I made when the fridge shut itself down.( 

(Even though you have an Eriba caravan, you might want to copy your enquiry to the Motorhome Matters forum where it will get more exposure.)