Just 4 1/2 miles down the road from the farm my Dad grew up on is JC Refrigeration. JR the owner has perfected the replacement of the cooling units on both the Norcold and Dometic gas absorption refrigerators found in most RV’s. He can either replace your existing gas absorption cooling unit with his upgraded version, or replace it with the same type of compressor that comes in residential refrigerators (with either 120V AC or 12V DC versions).
I chose the 120V AC residential compressor replacement. Although it eliminates the capability of running the refrigerator off of propane, the residential compressor (a Samsung) only draws 0.8 Amps and should be able to run for quite a while off of our three house batteries. Since we have yet to boon-dock (although we hope to on this year’s trip out west), we felt we could live with this limitation.
JR has an impressive facility and manufactures the cooling units right there in his shop. I arrived just before 8 AM and they were just finishing up the RV in front of me (they open at 6 AM). They were just finishing up the conversion when Dad arrived to checkout the process at 10AM. At that point JR began rerouting the RV wiring so that the refrigerator outlet is connected to our inverter so that it can run off of battery when we don’t have AC power or the generator running.
Once everything was completed we went back up front and paid and then JR gave Dad and I a little tour of his assembly and test area. He has a real nice operation and now our refrigerator can go from off (and hot) to 35 degrees in a matter of just a few hours. We no longer have to keep the temperature setting on 9 (Max) and hope. At 90 degrees the refrigerator had no issue keeping the inside temperature in the mid 30’s on the 5 setting and the freezer is always near zero degrees.