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25 valor 36v11 refrigerator problems

Dan54

Well-known member
Did these failures occur while your rv was at the same campsite? Do you have some type of surge protection? I was blowing circuit boards on my Dometic fridge (3 total) until I bought a Hughes Autoformer. That was about 3 years ago. Haven’t had a failure since - knock on wood!
 
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Upgraded to 2 lithium batteries not 1. They said it was because of fluctuations in the 1 battery dropping below required levels. Will see what happens.
 
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Chaseweston

Well-known member
There is no low voltage protection in the Everchill fridge circuit board. When supply voltage drops too low, there is a mosfet that overheats and burns itself up. Two boards burned up on ours from the battery dying. Interestingly enough, after the second time, I was told by Lippert that they are no longer sending boards for replacement and sent me a check to buy my own different fridge and a 1000w inverter... You could also install a low voltage cut-off board to cut power at a certain voltage to protect your fridge circuit board. You just install it in line with fridge supply or near the circuit board in the bottom rear of fridge and set the voltage cut off and min voltage on and let it be.

Search for the defrost circuit fix as well when you get around to it. That will happen to you eventually.
 
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George

Prominent Member
@Chaseweston My newly installed LiTime LFP battery has a low-voltage cutoff of 10.0v. (I think most LFP's today do)
Do you happen to know if 10.0v is soon enough to prevent damage to the fridge?
If it is then that's another good reason to move into the 21st century. 😉
 
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Chaseweston

Well-known member
@Chaseweston My newly installed LiTime LFP battery has a low-voltage cutoff of 10.0v. (I think most LFP's today do)
Do you happen to know if 10.0v is soon enough to prevent damage to the fridge?
If it is then that's another good reason to move into the 21st century. 😉
I'm not sure on the threshold voltage on the mosfet that burns up but I can tell you that the two times it happened to ours, was running off lithium that had a 10.0v BMS cutoff (Renogy at the time) - so power of deduction I'm confident going with no, that is too low to protect the fridge board. A 10.0V BMS LV cutoff is to prevent over discharging the cells in the battery below 2.5V, typically. The battery is considered fully discharged at 11.5V.

I think our norcold fridge has low voltage fuses at the base but don’t know if they work?
Fuses only protect OVER current (Amps). While the increased current and resistance in the mosfet is the cause of the increased heat that burns it up, I wouldn't trust a blade fuse on the source circuit to protect a board component. The companies making these fridges (Way interglobal, Everchill, now all owned by Lippert) aren't known for their electrical engineering..

Hence why they used a ridiculously cheap molex connector in the defrost circuit that is a fire hazard (at least on this model): Defrost Circuit Fix Write-up
 
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Chaseweston

Well-known member
Oh ya! I forgot about the fan too. I had ordered a spare fan for when that goes out. We aren't full-timing anymore so it's less critical but it's in the rig for when it happens!
 
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