Dometic door hinge failure

[Harve]

One hour into the first day of a coast to coast trip, stopped for groceries. Just finished loading the fridge when the upper hinge of the fridge door broke and the door rotated counterclockwise pivoting on the lower hinge and headed for the floor. Fortunately we were able to immediately grab the door and prevent the lower hinge for self destructing too.

Apparently this is a NOT unknown occurrence, and the nearest Camping World was not encouraging, they offered to install a new refrigerator, or maybe special order a replacement door. Not a situation you want or words to hear at the very start of a trip!

Nearby HomeDepot yielded Gorilla brand "duct tape" that actually held the broken hinge socket in place well enough (with lots of tender care) for us to reach our West Coast location. Attached a crude write up of what I hope will be a permanent fix.

Short version: DO NOT load fridge door with bottles and other weighty stuff - hinges are rather insubstantial plastic and are known to fail!!!

[MNtraveler]

I looked at ours today (also Dometic) and it's a metal hinge screwed into a metal frame with metal screws. Hoping for the best, but glad to know to be careful of the load which of course gets bounced around mercilessly!