Dometic DMC4101 fridge portion not cooling

[CFDBattChief]

Our 2 year old fridge is not cooling. The freezer works fine, reading currently 14 degrees F. We have tried powering down, changing the cooling settings, making sure the vents are not blocked, etc. It is currently empty and has been giving trouble for 2 days now. A week ago when we got set up boondocking in the Smoky’s, it was working fine. We are at a loss with what to try next. Problem continues whether we are running off the batteries, or if we have the generator running. Volts with generator on, the GD app shows 13.6. Volts right now w/o the generator is 12.5. The fridge will not cool below 51 degrees F. Would anyone have any suggestions?

Rhett

Update: I pulled the fridge out and measured the voltage at the fridge. The GD app showed 13.1 vdc with the solar panel in operation, no shore/generator power, with the fridge running. The voltage at the back of the fridge was 13.0. Compressor and fan were both running.

 

[jkwilson]

14 degrees is too warm for your freezer.

 

[Soundsailor]

It sounds like an airflow/fan problem. That's probably not much help since you have already investigated those. As I understand it, cooling in the frig part comes from cold air blown in from the freezer. Your freezer is working but the cold air isn't getting to the frig. Have you checked the fan?

 

[CFDBattChief]

Thanks Soundsailor. The air is coming out well in the freezer, well enough to cool the freezer quickly and I’ve seen temps below zero.
There is a sliding knob in the freezer for freezer temps, min to max settings. There is nothing in the manual about this setting, and I have not seen any difference in the amount of air going to the fridge by changing this setting. It may be a knob to change the electrical resistance for the temp probe in the freezer like what I saw on one YouTube video.
I continue to feel very little air movement into the fridge. If the coils were freezing up, I think I would have very little air movement in the freezer and the freezer would be performing poorly.

Rhett

 

[CFDBattChief]

Update: After getting home from our trip, I did some more troubleshooting on the fridge. I removed the back wall of the freezer, and removed the 2 panels from the roof and back wall of the fridge. Everything seemed to be working normally; fan, no freezing up of the evaporator, and no air flow blockages. I did add another layer of 1/4” weatherstripping on top of the severely compressed factory installed weatherstripping to help with sealing around the air vent connections for the fridge panels. What I think was giving me trouble was the temp slider adjustment located in the freezer. There are no electrical components with this adjustment. It DOES have a significant impact on air flow, however. So, if you set the freezer to “Max”, it drastically reduces the amount of cold air going to the fridge. There is nothing in the manual for the unit about the operation of this slider. After running the fridge for 2 days, one day on shore power, and the other on generator, it seems to functioning well with the freezer setting set to or close to “Min”. Temps in the single digits for the freezer and in the mid-to-low 30’s for the fridge were achieved.