Original Dometic Refrigerator

Although familiar with the idea of gas absorption refrigerators, I had never actually seen or worked on one until I got my Airstream.

Reading up on RV operation in general, I knew the unit was capable of running on either electricity or gas, and that it took some time for cooling to actually occur. So, with the refrigerator sitting on the shop floor, I plugged it in after looking the plumbing over. In what was no big surprise for a 37 year old refrigerator that had not run in 23 years, nothing occurred even after giving it several hours to make a good effort.

Checking voltages, I found the power cord had been chewed almost in two. Then I remembered the previous owner talking about a one time problem with squirrels coming down the refrigerator vent. Luckily, nothing else on the refrigerator looked like it had been feasted upon.

After installing a new power cord & giving it a few hours, ice started forming in the ice cube trays. After giving it a day or so to prove it could maintain solid cubes, I decided a real life test was in order. Did you know this model can comfortably hold three cases of beer?

A week or so later, I finally had time to check out gas operation. An old baby bottle brush wired to the end of a coat hanger did a fine job of cleaning the flue even though there really was not anything to clean out.

On this model, the pilot light is lit by the sparks from a thumbwheel spinning against a piece of flint.. Since the burner assembly is at the back of the unit, a long rod attached to the thumbwheel enables the camper to light the pilot from the front access panel. Or it is supposed to. My thumbwheel must be worn because I could not get consistent sparks even after replacing the flint. I did find that, in a camping situation, it is possible to light the pilot by carefully snaking one’s arm through everything while holding a propane match. The current plan is to adapt a BBQ grill’s piezoelectric sparker to fit the application.

Anyway, got the pilot lit. Now familiar with what is supposed to get warm, and how long it should take, I could tell ice cubes were not in the immediate future. So I pulled the burner assembly out, and cleaned & reinstalled it. Bingo! Repeating my real life test again, I declared success, and moved on to the next task.

If you are reading this looking for technical insight, I will mention that gas absorption refrigerators run on a duty cycle in that the device is either ON or OFF. When the unit is running on electricity, a heating unit either has full power or no power. When running on gas, the burner assembly gets either enough gas to maintain a pilot, or enough gas to actually roar if the air adjustment is too lean.

Let’s go camping!