Home style Fridge

[Jim Shirley]

I seem to remember that some BAC members replaced their original Fridge with a home style model.  Am looking to replace the Norcold in my '04 Monterey as we do not dry camp.  I think some brands work better in motorhomes.  Any info or advice would be welcomed.  Currently have a four door unit.

Jim

[Joel Weiss]

We used a Samsung RF197 model which has been quite popular among RVers.  It is counter depth (24") so it doesn't stick out any further than the Norcold did.  To my knowledge Samsung is the only manufacturer that has stated publicly, in print, that its fridges can be operated with a modfied-sine-wave inverter like most of us have.  The problem is that this model is in very short supply even though it shows as current at the Samsung website.  There is a slightly larger model that is a couple of inches deeper and some people have used it because it is more readily available.

The actual installation wasn't all that complex (although I didn't do it myself).  Half the windshield was taken out mostly to get rid of the Norcold since the Samsung would have gone through the door with its doors removed.  We did some rewiring and swapped the fridge and microwave circuits so the fridge can run off the inverter; if we want to run the microwave for lunch we can always use the generator.  Because the fridge is slightly taller than the Norcold we had to sacrifice the small drawers below it.  

We consider this to be the best mod we have made to the coach without question.

Here's what it looks like:

[Jim Shirley]

Joel,  This unit is kinda hard to find in stock but am sure I can come up with one.  How did you secure your unit to floor
And sides??  And, does your beaver have four or six batteries??

Jim

[Joel Weiss]

According to the guy who installed it, there is an L-bracket mounted to the top of the fridge and accessed through the old fridge's roof vent that is the primary "anti-tip" device.  At the front bottom edge there are a pair of smaller L-brackets to keep it from moving forward.  We've driven more than 10,000 miles with it in place with no difficulty.  There are no brackets mounted on the sides.

We have 4 6-volt batteries and the 100W solar on the roof and with the coach's alternator the batteries hardly seem drawn down at all at the end of a travel day regardless of how many times we stop, etc.  

Even though ours was installed in Spokane it was shipped there from New Jersey having been bought from AJ Madison, one of the country's large online appliance retailers.   It was difficult to find even last September.  We replaced the microwave-convection oven at the same time, so the two things together were enough to get free shipping.  It takes ~10 days to get something like that shipped cross-country.