Thetford fridge not working. Help or advice needed.

Wes

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Our 4 tr old Auto Roller 700 has a Thetford fridge-freezer (the new one with the LCD dsplay and atutomatic 3-way power source selection).

After two years of full time perfect use it has stopped working. The diagnostic fault code came up as 13 - Thermistor fail - check if connection on fin is connected properly, if not go to service centre.

Can anyone shed any light on this problem?? We are early into a 9 month european trip, currently in Northern Italy where it has been a consitant 25c for the past week.

Is there a quick and cheap way f fixing this, or do I have to bite the bulluit and find an Italian service center that do such repairs??

Any help, and advice or previous experience of this issue would be extremely appreciated.

Many thanks
 
Wes said:
Our 4 tr old Auto Roller 700 has a Thetford fridge-freezer (the new one with the LCD dsplay and atutomatic 3-way power source selection).

After two years of full time perfect use it has stopped working. The diagnostic fault code came up as 13 - Thermistor fail - check if connection on fin is connected properly, if not go to service centre.
Can anyone shed any light on this problem?? We are early into a 9 month european trip, currently in Northern Italy where it has been a consitant 25c for the past week.
Is there a quick and cheap way of fixing this, or do I have to bite the bulluit and find an Italian service center that do such repairs??

Any help, and advice or previous experience of this issue would be extremely appreciated.


Hi, I have nicked the following off another forum. It might help.

----------------

I had a very similar problem a few weeks ago. I noticed a lot of heat in the cutlery drawer above the fridge. The contents of the fridge was frozen, even though the setting on the panel was only set at one bar. I left it a few days and it went the other way with the fridge not cooling.

At one point the fridge went into fault and fault code 13 and the spanner was displayed.

I called Thetford who were extremely helpful. They explained that the most likely cause was a thyristor failure.

If you look inside your fridge you will see a couple of wires leading to a small black thing clipped onto the cooling fins inside the fridge. This is the thyristor.

Thetford were very good and sent a replacement FOC and it arrived a few days later. It's just a matter of pulling it off the cooling fin and pulling apart the cable connector and reclipping the replacement. It worked a treat and is back to normal.

One other helpful thing that Thetford explained may help you. If the thyristor is the fault then you should unplug and remove it. The fridge will go into manual control. This means that the cooling of the fridge is done on a time ratio bases. The bars on the front control panel indicate 12 minutes of cooling per hour. So if you select one bar the fridge should cool for 12 minutes every 1 hour. If you select 2 bars then it's 24 minutes per hour and so on until 5 bars means it's on constantly. This is not the best way to run the fridge but allows some sort of operation in an emergency.


Dezi
Click to expand...
 
Wes said:
Our 4 tr old Auto Roller 700 has a Thetford fridge-freezer (the new one with the LCD dsplay and atutomatic 3-way power source selection).

After two years of full time perfect use it has stopped working. The diagnostic fault code came up as 13 - Thermistor fail - check if connection on fin is connected properly, if not go to service centre.

Can anyone shed any light on this problem?? We are early into a 9 month european trip, currently in Northern Italy where it has been a consitant 25c for the past week.

Is there a quick and cheap way f fixing this, or do I have to bite the bulluit and find an Italian service center that do such repairs??

Any help, and advice or previous experience of this issue would be extremely appreciated.

Many thanks
Click to expand...

You will find a thermistor on ebay . Just make sure it is for your model . If you are unsure of the model then log on to Thetfords web site . A Thermistor for your fridge will cost around £15 .If you want to test your Thermistor , then disconnect it , and leave it at room temp for around 10 mins , and I think if by testing with an ohm meter it should read 12 ohms .You can check this reading with Thetford to make sure .
 
Thanks to everyone for this! I'm pleased it seems to be a reatively simple and inexpensive problem to fix (famous last words). Being stuck in North Italy isn't helping but I shall endeavour.

Thanks again
 
thermistor

hi wes.

when our thermistor went we were away also.
the error 13 message on the fridge doesn't stop the fridge working, it's just that the fridge will keep cooling and the top of the fridge can turn into an ice box.

the fridge goes into backup mode

i read on a website somewhere that the bars on the temperature level indicator will control the time the fridge works.
each bar represents about 10 minutes in every hour, so the more bars the longer the fridge works in each hour.

once again good luck:cool::cool:
 
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