Need to connect DC electric to refrigerator

[Cameron]

I have a Norcold N1350 refrigerator. The plug for the DC current to connect to the power board at the rear of the fridge is fried. How do I reconnect the DC power? Norcold tells me that they don’t carry the plug, that it is not one of their parts. The repair guy tells me I need to buy a new fridge. Norcold tells me even if I buy a new fridge, they won’t send a new plug to the control panel. Can anyone help? Thanks.
Cameron

 

[TJ&LadyDi]

Welcome to RVF, @Cameron; glad to have you join us. And, sorry that you're having issues with your refrigerator.

Could you post photos of the plug and receptacle so we know exactly what we are dealing with here? That would help. Someone here might recognize them and know of a source.

Most plugs/receptacles are pretty standard electronic components and you might also search one of the online parts houses for a replacement. Here's are links to Digikey and Mouser. Both that sell a wide variety of electronic components. I would be surprised if at least one of them didn't have some kind of replacement. You will have to do a bit of searching to find an exact match, but I've found a lot of "hard-to-find" electronic components on those sites.

DigiKey Home

DigiKey offers millions of products from thousands of manufacturers, many in-stock quantities available to ship same day. Apple Pay, Google Pay™ & Paypal accepted, order online today!

www.digikey.com

https://www.mouser.com

Good luck.

TJ

 

[Cameron]

Welcome to RVF, @Cameron; glad to have you join us. And, sorry that you're having issues with your refrigerator.

Could you post photos of the plug and receptacle so we know exactly what we are dealing with here? That would help. Someone here might recognize the flag and know of a source.

Most plugs/receptacles are pretty standard electronic components and you might also search one of the online parts houses for a replacement. Here's are links to Digikey and Mouser. Both that sell a wide variety of electronic components. I would be surprised if at least one of them didn't have some kind of replacement. You will have to do a bit of searching to find an exact match, but I've found a lot of "hard-to-find" electronic components on those sites.

DigiKey Home

DigiKey offers millions of products from thousands of manufacturers, many in-stock quantities available to ship same day. Apple Pay, Google Pay™ & Paypal accepted, order online today!

www.digikey.com

https://www.mouser.com

Good luck.

TJ

 

[Cameron]

Thank you for your reply. I am attaching two photos taken by the repairman showing the plug. Hopefully this helps to give a better picture of the problem. I suppose if I can find the plug like the one in the first picture that is burnt brown with the red and white wires this will work. The plug as I understand connects the DC wires to the power board. Any more help would be greatly appreciated. I can’t tell you how aggravating this has been as the repairman wants me to buy a new refrigerator. If I did, I would still need the plug as Norcold doesn’t have it. Norcold tells me to contact Winnebago and Winnebago tells me they can’t help and I need to contact Norcold. I looked ar the websites you mentioned, but haven’t see anything hopeful yet. Maybe you could give me some advice in that regard. Thanks.

 

[Jim]

Personally, I'd be more concerned as to why the plug overheated like that. Won't replacing the plug just leave you to have the same issue happen again?

 

[TJ&LadyDi]

Personally, I'd be more concerned as to why the plug overheated like that. Won't replacing the plug just leave you to have the same issue happen again?

That is a good point, @Jim! Need to find out why the original plug failed before simply replacing it. Looks like a high-current failure situation and that does not bode well.

TJ

 

[Cameron]

I was certainly worried about what caused the overheating failure. The 120 volt shoreline and propane worked fine. I only tried to use the battery power as an assist to keep the fridge cool while we were driving. I asked the camper van repairman and he said the failure was due to using the battery power too much. This doesn’t make sense, because we had only used the batter power at the beginning of a trip before we began seeing an error message indicating that the battery power wasn’t working. We had bought the van shortly before the trip and perhaps the failure had already occurred. I talked to two electricians and neither one wanted to look into a RV electrical problem. I will talk with repairman again. This is a 12 volt line leading from the batteries, so I don’t see how it could be a high current failure. Except for the fridge, the chassis and coach batteries appeared to be working fine. I suppose the repairman can check to see if the battery voltage is correct. Any other ideas?