Our fridge stopped cooling for a bit recently.

Details:

Norcold 1210 Refrigerator in a 2017 Reflection 337RLS purchased in April this year (manufactured in March 2017).

Camped at beach (high humidity), temps in the 70s and 80s, 60s at night.

The fridge temperature went up to 51 degrees while on 120 volt electric 1 evening on a setting of 5. A setting of 5 usually brings the fridge temperature down to the low to mid 30s.

We had just filled some ice trays, but had been doing that before on the trip without temperature spikes.

I do not have a temperature monitor in the freezer, but the ice cream in the left freezer was soupy, and the ice in the ice bucket in the right side was starting to melt.

Even though the burner was hot on electric I switched the fridge to gas only before bedtime, and the temperature only came down to 45 degrees by the next morning on a setting of 7.

I could hear the upper external fans operating.


I did several things at the same time the next morning that I thought might help, and maybe should have done individually to see which 1 worked:

I turned the fridge completely off for about 1/2 hour.

The outside condensate catch tray was completely full and overflowing. I emptied that.

I could still hear the upper external fans operating, but I did not pull the cover to check that area.

Within a couple of hours, the fridge temperature dropped to the mid 30s again, and the freezer was cold. I switched from gas to electric, and the temperature remained good.


Now to my questions:

Any ideas of what might have happened ??

Can these fridges get some type of vapor lock in the system ??

Could a full external condensate catch tray affect the heating element right beside of it ?? a bit of runoff from the catch tray had gone under the burner area.

Does this system really need an external condensate catch tray ?? I pulled the hose through the external fridge vent like we had on our older trailers on the trip home, and all seemed to work well.

Thanks in advance for any help with this intermittent problem.