Date:         Mon, 27 Aug 2012 18:34:28 -0500
Reply-To:     Jeff Palmer <jpalmer@MYMTS.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Jeff Palmer <jpalmer@MYMTS.NET>
Subject:      Re: Pulled my fridge today and...
Comments: To: Jim Felder <jim.felder@GMAIL.COM>
In-Reply-To:  <CAFnDXk1pZ+Cz=N9jAY7pqmK6-gy3RbLYJbcj=CWb1kTrNNpcvg@mail.gmail.com>
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Congratulations!  Last year I fixed my sink faucet first :)  This year the fridge!

Or maybe not.  Last year I also took off the flue cover and stuck my shop vac down as far as it would go.  I heard stuff passing through the tube, i swear!  Seems to light easier now.

Did we clean out the same thing I wonder?

Jeff
85 Westfalia (Dometic 182A? B? X?)

On 2012-08-26, at 2:50 PM, Jim Felder wrote:

> Fixed it. At least it looks that way. .
> 
> The performance of my once ice-making, easy-to-light fridge has been
> faltering the last year or so, to the point that I took a cooler along on
> my last trip. Yesterday after lunch I turned it on propane and took notes
> more or less every hour of its performance. The temps fell slowly, and
> tracked about 12 degrees below ambient all night and this morning.
> 
> I am in the habit of touching the flue vent cover when I am traveling, just
> to see, and I know what it should feel like. It should be uncomfortably,
> but not blistering, hot. It wasn't. It wasn't half that.
> 
> So, I pulled the fridge out and had a look at the burner box. At first I
> didn't notice anything really out of the ordinary. Then as I was moving
> things around, I saw some black silt fall out of the slits in the burner
> tube. I took it all the way out and cleaned it good, and cleaned on each
> side of the orifice but decided that if I could blow through it and tell it
> was moving air, it was OK. I got a lot of what looked like fine black sand
> out of the tube. Say quarter a teaspoon in all, and blew some of the same
> out of the flue vent tubes. I put it back together and fired it up, after
> the obligatory ten fifteen minutes of priming it. The flue vent cover was
> hot. I started recording the temps. In the first 30 minutes, it has fallen
> more than it did all night last night. I am confident enough that it's
> going to work that I am—gasp—hooking up the sink faucet.
> 
> Jim
>