Electrolux 3-way Fridge

Hello all,

I seem to be having trouble with the cooling of my 3-way fridge on my 2002 VW T4 Trident. The fridge cools perfectly fine at some campsites with the thermostat on 5. However, twice now the fridge has failed to cool at all even though the van has been plugged into the hook-up overnight. I'm not sure if this is to do with the electricity current at the campsite, although I would have thought that this would all be the same at every campsite. Even by adjusting the thermostat to 7 and leaving it on over night there has been no cooling at all. This has only happened twice so is not a major issue, but I was wondering if this has been a problem with any of your vans of similar age? and if so how to fix it?

Many thanks,
Alex 

Alex, you don't say whether the mains cooling has stopped for the last two times you've attempted to use it, or whether it's an intermittent problem which has occurred twice, with normal cooling in between. 
If the former, then the mains heating element may have stopped working. If it's the latter it could be that the van was pitched at an angle and the refrigerant was finding it difficult to circulate. On the occasions the mains electric didn't work, did the fridge work on gas?

Thank you very much for your prompt reply. Sorry, maybe I should have been a bit clearer. This is an intermittent problem and the fridge does cool properly in between. On the two occasions that this has occurred the fridge has cooled but not very well, meaning that you can’t really keep anything cool in there, but it is ever so slightly cooler than room temperature. Since owning the van, I have never tried operating the fridge on gas. Many thanks, 

Perhaps you are not level. Fridges can only tolerate an incline of 5 degrees.

On these occasions, had the fridge already been cooling Ok until that point (for example on 12V while you were driving), or had it just been switched on?

It's always a good idea to chill down an absorption fridge for a while before use. So run it for 12 hours or so either via hook up or on gas, so that it is chilled when you need to load it. Putting stuff in it when at ambient temperature and then running it to cool itself and whatever you've put inside will take a long time to reach a satisfactory temperature. Pre-cooling is the way to go.
On the occasions when it doesn't chill, check the top vent grille and if there's warm air coming out then the fridge is working but the refigerant isn't circulating. This is normally because the fridge is not level.

Thanks for you replies. I tend to check how level the van is when I arrive at campsites, on one of the occasions where the fridge had not been functioning properly the van was at a 3 degree level, so perhaps that was it. On these occasions the fridge had just been switched on at the mains on the site as I don’t use the 12v while driving feature. Thanks again, Alex 

Thanks, I will most certainly try pre-cooling before my next trip and again feel the vent to see if it is warm or not. Are we going with the conclusion of the van not being level? Alex 

All my fridges have worked going back to the 80`s never or rarely were they level, level enough so that drinks didn`t slide of the table.

They are on my drive which slopes from road to the house and also sideways , fridges both working as they should. one a 1998 the other 2003.

What I've found with most of the absorption fridges that I've owned is that they typically take several hours for the circulation to get established. Some were quicker than others, but it would not be unusual for one to take 6 hours to get going if they had been off for a long while. So pre-cooling (or just using the fridge on 12V as you drive to site) will almost certainly get better results. As with DM's, none of mine were particularly sensitive to being out of level.

Thanks, my van is stored on a forward facing slope, do you think that this would have any affect? As I probably won't be using the van again this year I may just try the fridge on overnight to see what the result is. I believe that the leisure battery on my van may be the original, as I cannot get any output from that at all, so my only form of running the fridge is hook-up as my gas bottles are empty.

It really depends on the amount of slope and how an individual fridge reacts as they all seem to be different. Some stop working with just a lean under one wheel and others work fine if you suspend the van vertically. There's just no telling. 

I can't be sure how you're van is wired but I do know that when my van didn't have a leisure battery fitted the fridge would work when hooked up but not when the engine was running and the hook up disconnected. Understandable as there was no battery to take power from, whereas on hook up the charger was feeding the fridge direct (it's a 12V compressor fridge so different from yours). In your case there is a battery and it should be being charged by the alternator when the engine is running and even if the battery doesn't retain a charge the power might still go to the fridge.

Hello again, I’m not sure about running the fridge on 12v. Should a red light appear on the 12v switch when this is running? As I know on some fridges that it does, but as my leisure battery has never worked I have just assumed that this feature would not have worked.