Dometic 3.5 cu. ft. Frig

[bigironcoder]

I'm wondering if others who have this frig have trouble keeping the temp down in the 30's during hot weather. Ours is at 45 right now. It's 93 outside. That side of the camper is in the shade. We do have a fan inside the frig. The countertop above the frig has always gotten hot. I did remove the outside upper vent cover, and now the countertop is barely warm. So removing the vent cover does let more heat out, but it seemed to only lower the frig temp a couple degrees.

This is a 2018 model. We have had 4 RV's and have experience dealing with these RV refrigerators, but this Dometic RM2351 just seems inadequate. I should have said at the beginning it does run 29-30 degrees when it is around 70 degrees or less outside.

[Grumpy]

You need a fan in the outside vent.

[bigironcoder]

I should have mentioned there is one installed on the backside of the frig about half way between the lower and upper vent openings. It looks like it was installed by Dometic. It has a thermostat that turns it on automatically. It looks too neat to have been installed at the Jayco factory. It's about 4" square and runs constantly in this hot weather.

It seems to move a lot of air but maybe it isn't close enough to the condenser coils. It's about 8" below them.

[bigironcoder]

Found lots of diagrams on the Internet for poor, better and best rv frig installations. Mine could be a poster boy for a poor setup. Way too much air space between wall and condenser, upper vent too low, fan too far below condenser, underside of countertop traps heat...

Anyway, now I have several ideas to improve its performance. Not really any fault of the Dometic frig. Makes me wonder if Jayco designers ever read the installation specs for the appliances they draw into the plans.