Broken hinge on Norcold fridge

[gs750t]

Has anyone else experienced a lower broken hinge on their fridge door?

[Grumpy]

It's been an issue with some since the 2006 or so. NORCOLD actually has a support bracket available.

https://www.amazon.com/Norcold-63416...a-515642656754

[Route 66 Traveler]

My bottom hinge broke about a year ago. I removed the door and used JB Weld to glue the broken piece back on. Thanks to this forum (Grumpy) I found the support bracket, installed it and have never had another problem. My Norcold was built in 2017. This problem has been going on forever. You'd think they could have at least made a replaceable hinge by now......

[SkyBound]

This happened to me a few summers ago while on a 3 week trip. I researched online and found that this is a common problem; so much so that Norcold actually makes a support bracket kit for the lower hinge! The hinge is plastic and supports quite a bit of weight, especially with all your heavy drinks on the inside of the door and in my case, a heavy solid wood veneer insert on the outside so that it matches my cabinets... Too much weight for a plastic hinge that, when it breaks, requires replacement of the full door! Not cheap.

I gorilla glued the hinge to get us through the trip and made sure to have no weight on the door for the time being.

I called Attwood, the company that makes Norcold, and plead my case. It took some convincing and chatting but they eventually agreed to ship me a new door. I bought the support bracket kit, which was like 35 bucks for 2 small pieces of stamped metal, and installed it so this won't happen again. The kit comes with a left and a right bracket because it can be a right or left opening door depending on what you have. Find a buddy with the opposite of what you have and split the cost.

[Route 66 Traveler]

Originally Posted by SkyBound

The hinge is plastic and supports quite a bit of weight, especially with all your heavy drinks on the inside of the door and in my case, a heavy solid wood veneer insert on the outside so that it matches my cabinets... Too much weight for a plastic hinge

We have learned to NEVER travel with heavy items in the door, such as bottles of milk, beer, OJ, etc. It's a bit of a pain to not be able to use the door space, but it beats not having a door on the fridge! Once in camp then we put the items back in the door, but always use caution opening and closing the door.

[Jopopsy]

Originally Posted by Grumpy

It's been an issue with some since the 2006 or so. NORCOLD actually has a support bracket available.

https://www.amazon.com/Norcold-63416...a-515642656754

They don’t have a bracket for the newer N8X fridges.

[gs750t]

Thanks for the responses about our broken fridge door. We're on a month long trip and I have gerryrigged the door with dt. Seems to be holding up.

[kevin5203]

My experience and solution exactly. I had the support bracket and JB Weld shipped to my location from Amazon and fixed it while still on the road after seeing the solution on YouTube. I used some expandable bars to hold a blanket over the front of the refrigerator to keep it cold while I had the door off for repairing the hinge.