We planned for a couple of weeks away in early July, but realised, when we got to the boat, that the Shoreline fridge was still playing up. It was iced up at the back of the fridge and the motor hardly stopped running. These, I understand, are indications that there is insufficient fluid in the system. Apparently it slowly leaks away over the years, and the fridge is 10 years old.
So, two possibilities, one, get the fridge re-gassed – just like the air-conditioning in a car, or two, buy a new fridge. A 10- year old fridge won’t have the same gas in it as a modern one – manufacturers can’t use the same materials nowadays – so re-gassing may not be quite as simple as it sounded, and a 10 year-old fridge may not be worth re-gassing anyway as all the other components like the compressor will be wearing out. Also, try as I might I couldn’t find anyone that could re-gas it anyway.
So buy a new one.
I arranged to pick up a new Shoreline FF115 from Midland Chandlers at Mercia Marina in Willington above Burton-on-Trent. They even agreed to take away the old one – a major benefit on a narrowboat.
We duly arrived on the Wednesday and they said we were lucky as they only had two in stock and they sold the second one an hour after they wrote my name on the first.
They brought the new fridge to the boat and left me to install it. Before I did that I thought that I would a) leave it for an hour to let the refrigerant settle, and b) connect it to 12volt on a temporary piece of wire just to check the motor ran.
I did both, but the motor wouldn’t run. The fridge sat there with the alarm LED flashing twice, which the manual says indicates “too many start attempts or Fan over current”. Given the fan wasn’t connected, too many start attempts.
I went back to Midland Chandlers and told them. They were suspicious of my temporary wire and brought down a leisure battery to test the fridge. Connected the battery – same error code.
Luckily, that very morning they had taken delivery of a new one. So they brought that down and took away the first one.
Once again I connected it to my lash up and we got the same error code!
At this point I figured there was very little chance Shoreline had produced two bad units, so what was going on? I read the manual. It says, ” The electronic is protected against too many start attempts. If more than 10 starts occur in an unusual short time, the unit will blink with error code 2 and prevent further starts for 60secs. After 60 sec normal operation will be resumed.
I began to wonder if the electronics was clever enough to memorise the error code before I unplugged it, and start the 60 seconds over again after the Midland Chandler’ guy had connected the leisure battery – we only connected it to the battery for long enough to see the error code – maybe 20 seconds. Though we tried it a few times, each time we disconnected it after we saw the error code.
So I shuffled the old fridge out of its place, disconnected it and shuffled the new fridge near enough to use the original cabling. Connected the new fridge and switched it on. On came the error display. So I left it for a minute, and the motor started up!
So it looks like the new Shoreline electronic unit measures the voltage at its connection while the motor starts and if it drops below 9.6 volts it stops the motor. Actually, the manual says it does this under “Battery Protection”. Of course once the motor stops the voltage goes up and the motor tries to start again. If it does this 10 times in a short period it stops trying and reports error code 2.
Conclusion: if I had tried the correct thickness of wire to start with all would have been well, or if we had left the leisure battery connected long enough to time-out the error code, it would also have worked. You live and learn.
We now have a new fridge.
Just to complete this story, the new fridge is about 10mm shorter than the old one. The new one, it turns out, has smaller wheels than the old one. The new fridge won’t fit on the wooden plinth I built for the old one that provides enough clearance under the fridge for the external bilge fan. Something for another day.