Fridge and/or 12V issue on FIL/MIL rental

[crk112]

We're on a trip with my parents-in-law, they rented a Jayco 31UL. We run the generator at night to power both our units and then run off battery/propane during the day.

The fridge in their unit is a Norcold 1210T.
Yesterday, father-in-law noticed their fridge is not cooling and had "LO DC" warning. They shut off the fridge for the day so it could thaw and dry. Later with generator on, I found 13.6V on both batteries as well as across the parallel circuit. This leads me to believe their 12V converter is operating.

They turned the fridge back on overnight, letting it run on the 120V shore power for several hours and later switched it to LP. In both cases the fridge and freezer did not cool at all; still room temperature inside, didn't drop at all. We can hear the LP burner operating when in that mode.

This morning when we turned off the shore power, I tested the batteries after about 15 minutes and found 12.6V ... granted there are a few things drawing on them but should be just lights and possibly a vent van.

Seems like two different issues so far... one being the batteries losing their voltage quite rapidly after turning off the converter, and the other issue being the fridge not cooling on shore power or LP.

Mother in law is currently awaiting a call back from mobile RV repair, but we're pretty far in the sticks so they're probably a couple of hours away once we can even get on their list.

Are there any further troubleshooting options we might have available to us in the meantime?

Thanks in advance!

[flybouy]

Sounds to me like the batteries are not holding a charge and need to be replaced. If it's a rental unit I would imagine the batteries have been drained repeatedly to the point of being damaged.

[CedarCreekWoody]

All of the things you mention are signs of weak batteries and insufficient time on generator or shore power. Batteries take a long time to charge and a fridge requires a lot of time to cool, especially if it is full of warm food.

[crk112]

Turns out the fridge is kaput. Worked with the mobile RV tech to do some troubleshooting... removed a cover on the control board, checked a blade fuse and a glass tube fuse and verified with a multimeter that they were good.. Used a magnet on a little black box to apparently reset a safety switch inside... finally unplugged the temp sensor inside the fridge.

Fridge still does not cool on AC or LP, and to reiterate we gave it several hours to do so. In fact after unplugging the temp sensor the temp inside the fridge actually INCREASED.

They determined the fridge requires replacement.

[crk112]

Funny end to this story.... we returned home to Minnesota and while my in-laws were unloading the motor home prior to returning it, they turned the fridge on. By the time they got back to the owner's house the fridge and freezer were cold!

The manual said out-of-level tolerance was 3 degrees side-to-side and 6 degrees front to back (as looking at the front of the fridge). With a digital level we had determined it to be tilted approx 2 degrees to the left (the front of the rig was slightly low) at the time it wasn't working.

I once thought buying and renting out RVs might be a fun gig, but not anymore with all the stuff that seems to break!!