Coachman fridges

[Picard57]

Have just arrived in Scotland only to find the door on the fridge of my new 460vip had fallen off completely, milk, coffee etc everywhere, not a good start. Before anyone asks, yes it was properly closed and latched and not overloaded. Have used it on 3 previous trips and not had this. Dealer has been contacted, waiting for reply.

  Fridge is Dometic series 10 with 2 way door opening, so my question is has anyone else had problems with these fridges?

[WispMan]

What is a 460Vip?

[Picard57]

I have a new 460vip with the new dometic series 10 fridge and the door has completely fallen off, any one else having problems with dometic overpriced comedy products?

[Legal Eagle]

3 minutes ago, WispMan said:

What is a 460Vip?

A Coachman caravan as indicated in the OPs profile......and now in the duplicate post under the Coachman Caravans section!

[Stagn8]

This page 31 of the manual, 
 CAUTION! – Beware of injury
The door can completely detach from the device if the locking pin has been tampered with or is twisted.

Loads of vans with series 10 including mine but not heard of anyone else having your problem.

[Andy ML Wood]

Hello Picard47. I have a new Coachman 460 from Glossop caravans in May. Since then it has been back for repair to the fridge as the freezer section was not working properly. Most stuff in there thawed out after a short time. It is still not cold enough. Also a few days ago, it bleeped in the middle of the night with a warning triangle and battery icon.  I couldn't fix it. Later that day I had another try and it worked on all 3 modes [car, gas & elec]. Modern stuff eh? It does your head in. Cheers. Andy

 

[hp100425ev]

R

I cant say I’ m very impressed with the Dometic latest offering in the Series 10 fridges.

The either side opening seems a bit of a gimick to me although that might be because in my 2021 VIP 545 I cant see why anyone would want to open it from the left side as you look at it.

Mine has not come off completely, but I suspect it would do so if both sides were ‘opened’ at the same time.

Have you tried simply pushing the door back into place, pushing evenly on both sides at once.

 

I also find the freezer a bit lacking, but in all honesty it is no different than previous model Dometic fridges in Swift and Lunar vans we have had in the past, when visits from a Dometic Service Agent achieved nothing more than a digital thermometer being pointed in to the centre of the freezer and the temperature declared to be low enough.

I have found that stacking items like steak, chicken breasts and sausages vertically side by side rather than flat on top of each other works better, and also turning them round from back to front each day helps.

I have also placed a piece of plastic round conduit cut to size across the bottom of the freezer compartment about 1 inch in from the front edge, but not convinced this has done much to help.

 

 

Edited August 15, 2021 by hp100425ev

[Sonar]

40 minutes ago, hp100425ev said:

 

 

I have found that stacking items like steak, chicken breasts and sausages vertically side by side rather than flat on top of each other works better, and also turning them round from back to front each day helps.

I have also placed a piece of plastic round conduit cut to size across the bottom of the freezer compartment about 1 inch in from the front edge, but not convinced this has done much to help.

 

 

Not very good if you have to keep moving stuff about to keep it frozen.
 

glad I did now now change my broken dometic fridge  freezer for the same make.

total change and now have a thetford and never had any problems with it.

it also came with left or right options that can be changed and had all its shelves fitted.

[Picard57]

Hi everyone, appreciate the feed back, posted in 2 sections as it seemed that this fault can affect coachman owners as well as other brands of van.

  Agree with other posts that front of freezer does not keep food frozen, have  noticed that freezer shelf moves forward in transit. Door plastic fascia panel has also slipped down revealing the cheap foam insulation and the door seal keeps coming off,very poor product considering the unbelievable price should you need to pay to replace. 

 

ADMIN COMMENT - Duplicate topic merged in to this one

[CJ1149]

Yes, it's very annoying.

Dometic seem to be having all sorts of problems with some of their products.

Is it  poor design or quality control ?    It's certainly not unique to Coachman and I can imagine that they (and others) will change supplier if enough complaints ensue.   

[Stagn8]

Have noticed there seem to be a number of coachman owners complaining about their fridges, much less from other manufactures. Would this suggest coachman not installing them in the correct manner.

Have a series 10 in my Bailey and have to say it is phenomenal,  load up the freezer with two litre bottles of water in the evening, absolutely solid by the morning, frozen right through ready for the car when out for the day.

As to the gimmicky left right door, wife’s left handed, I am right handed so absolutely perfect, would be at the top of the list if looking again.

Shame the outer door panel, guess you are an expect on foam to know it’s cheap or are you just stating a bias as you have decided you don’t like Dometic even though you have no idea what the actual problem is i.e, the root cause, not the symptoms.

Could we’ll be the fridge, could equally be poor installation with Coachman not creating the proper tunnel effect required by Dometic, have a look at the Dometic installation manual for details.

[IanV8]

Friend on Rally with me had the same in their Swift and another in their Coachman.

 

[Picard57]

I am glad you are happy with your fridge as I am sure many others are. Whist I have an opinion on the product based on factual usage this is just an exercise in information sharing that may be useful to all users good and bad and absolutely not meant to be a personal afront to anyone 

[Stagn8]

On 15/08/2021 at 12:19, Picard57 said:

dometic overpriced comedy products?

I’m not affronted at all, but all things need to be balanced, if you had just restricted yourself to your ‘opinion on the product based on factual usage’ fine, but you felt the need to add ‘Dometic overpriced comedy products’ can’t see anything comical about mine.
I agree, vastly overpriced like anything made for caravans but it seems in Bailey caravans they work very well and from the comments from other Coachman owners in Coachman caravans not so good. 
So is it ‘Dometic overpriced comedy products’, could it be less than competent designers at Coachman, perhaps even user error. I don’t suppose we will ever know.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[rambler2]

I have a 2021 Coachman 575 VIP fitted with a series 10 fridge.From the start the alarm kept going off indicating that door was not shut.The door was shut but I could not reset the alarm so turned the fridge offso we could sleep.The van went back to the dealer who had it for a day and ststed all was now well.Off we went on our next trip to find that it was exactly as before with the alarm sounding and the door falling off on one side result fridge turned off and me absolutely furious Spoke to dealer and told them I was going to reject the van they said I couldnt do that as they should try to repair it I stated that they had been given the chance but it was still not fit for purpose and rejection was on the cards.He got back to me and made arrangements for a Dometic engineer to visit the next day.He turned up on time and after me telling him not impressed with the product he explained that the fridge should have been in a unit that supported the base of the fridge which Coachman had been toldbut had not adhered to.resulting in the door dropping slightly and contact between the magnet and door not connecting and the alarm therefore going off.He bent the upper supports down and raised the magnet in the door top no more problems.It would appear that Coachman were at fault and not Dometic 

[Brecon]

It is very common that van makers do not adhere to the fitting instructions of fridges.

[Mr Plodd]

1 hour ago, Brecon said:

It is very common that van makers do not adhere to the fitting instructions of fridges.

 

Especially when it comes to the distance between the sidewall and the fins being correct. Many have too great a gap so there is insufficient convection current present. A fan on the top vent can help overcome that to some extent. 

[hp100425ev]

Well, we are on the fifth day of our current trip, and for the first time, the frozen food in our 10 series dometic fridge is staying frozen.

For those who have similar problems and might be interested here’s what I did.

The complaints about frozen food defrosting all seemed to relate to the Series 10 ‘standard’ fridge with an internal freezer compartment rather than the tall fridge with separate freezer.

So removing the freezer compartment and looking at it, it is evident that the sides do not make a good tight fit. The compartment can be widdled a couple of millimeters each way, which means it is not air tight. Also. When the freezer compartment door is opened, there is a tendency for the whole compartment to slide forward leaving a gap of several millimeters at the back.

So the first thing I did as a temporary measure. was cut several strips of kitchen roll about an inch wide, doubled them, over and pushed them into the gaps at each side of the compartment on the inside with a thin bladed knife.

Then each time the compartment door was opened, I pushed the whole thing backwards to make sure there was no gap at the back.I also continued to use the plastic conduit I have mentioned previously to make sure the items remained stood up rather than laid down and were kept to the rear of the compartment rather than falling to the front.

The result has been (so far) 4 days with no defrosting.

I am now tempted to try using silicon to seal the sides rather than pushing kitchen roll in the gaps, but not sure whether to try this underneath the freezer compartment or inside it, and also not sure whether to use it along the back edge, again inside or outside.

All in all, I am happier than I was.

[Tradewinds]

My fridge went 10days before it needed a defrost. Then running on setting No.4 I get -12C, this keeps magnums and chips frozen.

The removable freezer section works well and the fit is acceptable in my fridge. 

[hp100425ev]

4 hours ago, Tradewinds said:

My fridge went 10days before it needed a defrost. Then running on setting No.4 I get -12C, this keeps magnums and chips frozen.

The removable freezer section works well and the fit is acceptable in my fridge. 

 

Makes me wonder why there can be such a difference in fridges of the same model, assuming the fridge in your Coachman is fitted exactly the same as the one in mine.

Do things stay frozen in yours even at the front near the door?

[Tradewinds]

On 21/08/2021 at 12:41, hp100425ev said:

 

Makes me wonder why there can be such a difference in fridges of the same model, assuming the fridge in your Coachman is fitted exactly the same as the one in mine.

Do things stay frozen in yours even at the front near the door?

Just got home yesterday after two weeks away. The fridge was at -8C after towing for 200miles and two refreshment stops.

I have never checked if things stay frozen at the front but a 2kg bag of chips stays frozen as does ice cream.

I think the performance of my fridge is acceptable and the same as previous caravan fridges I have had.

The only thing I think is not quite correct is having to run at setting No.4 because this cools the non-freezer section down to about +2C and that is a little cold +4C would be better.  

[Mr Plodd]

33 minutes ago, Tradewinds said:

The only thing I think is not quite correct is having to run at setting No.4 because this cools the non-freezer section down to about +2C and that is a little cold +4C would be better.  

 

To quote “The Pythons” 

 

Two degrees! TWO DEGREES! You don’t know your born ya lucky begger, we could only dream of such luxury!!! We had to make do with blowing all night on damp cloth to keep our week old, sour milk, cool And we were grateful for  just that tha’ knows” 

[hp100425ev]

Well, may finally be getting somewhere

 Rang Dometic to point out that items defrost in my Dometic series 10 freezer box. Told the guy there were two issues I had identified. One was that the removable freezer box can be rocked from side to side and was obviously not sealing properly and the other was that every time the freezer is opened it slides forward leaving a gap at the back up to half an inch wide. Both these issues were allowing warmer air into freezer causing defrosting and colder air into fridge causing lower temperature than really necessary.

 

He surprised me by acknowledging that these are issues they are aware of and that they have some tape available to seal the gaps and prevent forward movement. He promised to send me a pack with instructions on how and where to place it

Not received it yet but hopefully after bank holiday all will be well.

He couldn't explain why some units have these issues and others don't.

I can't understand why Dometic need to have a removable freezer box. A fully moulded in unit would solve all these issues.

 

 

[Keith100]

Just read the post about the fridge door falling off. This is the new fridge that opens either way. Well I’ve just joined the club! One hinge snapped off a couple of weeks ago. Managed to use the fridge anyway as it would still open from the other side. Returned home and the alarm on the fridge started beeping saying the door not closed. It was closed. Dealer sorted the alarm issue. Apparently there’s a magnet at the top of the door under the plastic cover and this can drop with the fridge then believing the door is still open. Anyway, got home from the dealers to find the fridge door has now fallen off completely. The bottom hinge on the door has now snapped off on the same side as the top one which had previously snapped. These fridges are obviously not fit for purpose. They may be fine in a still environment but the hinges are too flimsy for bouncing around in a caravan on UK roads. 

[Mr Plodd]

Don’t you just love all of these “improvements” that we, as the consumers, don’t really want?

Look at how many fridges need new PCB’s these days. What’s wrong with a good old  fashioned 4 position rotary mechanical switch as fitted to my 3019 Bailey because it’s a poverty spec Cabrera (well it isn’t ‘cos it’s a dealer special with most of the extras fitted to the Cabrera for over £6k less)

 

 Precious little to fail and hammer your wallet for something in the region of £175 for a PCB  that probably costs less than a fiver to produce.

 

Ah silly me, that’s the whole point of them isn’t it! Increased profits!!!