While packing up to depart Mexico, we discovered that our refrigerator was no longer working on propane. Luckily Chris’s battery system was good enough to power our fridge until we could get back to the US and do some troubleshooting.
Many RV fridges are designed to operate on two different power sources, electricity or propane. I find propane operation of a fridge to be interesting because when else do you burn gas in order to cool something down?! The ammonia cycle of an RV fridge is an interesting invention.
Our troubleshooting consisted of listening for propane ignition and visually inspecting the circuit board for obviously damaged wires or fuses. We were lucky enough to notice that there seemed to be no spark attempt to ignite the propane. Chris then took a long lighter and attempted to self light the propane in order to determine if we were have an error with the gas line or the ignition source. Flame achieved = ignition source error.
We decided the easiest and quickest fix was a new circuit board rather than continuing to determine what part of the board was bad. Amazon had a new board to our next stop within two days and we spent an hour this morning completing the replacement and hoping our determination was correct.
We have ignition! Go Team! Another successful repair while on the road.
Great detective-skills!