Refurbished refrigerator cooling coils

[RVfishereman]

This was posted by another contributor but it is well worth reading:

"My 2004 Dometic RM2652 fridge stopped working. Inside smelled like ammonia and would not cool. I just bought the MH used and it never worked for me. I tossed around the idea of replacing it for $1000-$1300, but opted instead to buy a $400 refurbished cooling unit from RVcool.com.

Based on their website and pdf instructions, they gave me the impression it would be a 2 hour job start to finish. Boy was that wrong. I consider myself above average in my mechanical abilities, and I have every tool under the sun. I still spent about 7 hours replacing this unit. I could have done it in about half the time had the directions been more clear on what to expect. It is clear the instructions were written to make people comfortable buying the unit...as the instructions are available to review before making the decision to buy the unit. I believe this is a dis-service to the customer.

If anyone wants to try this product, be aware it is not for the average person. I had to use hammer and pry-bar, pneumatic dremel and river tool, and lots of muscle. There is a lot of tweaking and trial and error that needs to be done...nothing seems straight forward. Ultimately, you cannot know if you did everything correctly until you get everything put together and try iy. If it does not work correctly, you have to take everything apart again and reassemble. You need to use mastic caulking, silicon caulking, double sided tape, foil tape...so there is a lot to do and undo.

If I had it to do all over again, I would just have paid the extra $600 for a new unit...that would have taken about 45 minutes to remove old unit and reinstall new one."

I agree 100%. The problem really is worse than what to has been stated. RVcool refurbished units tend to fail, mine lasted 26 days. I was on the road. They demanded that I pull the refrigerator and run test in a campground. I did their test and they still would not replace the unit. I absolutely needed a refrigerator. After talking with two professional RV service technicians I found out that I was not the only person to experience rapid failure.

RVcool’s products are prone to failure and it is impossible to comply with the terms of their warranty.