New Amish cooling unit question

[Malibu39]

Just replaced my cooling unit and power board in my Norcold 1201 with a Amish built unit. Had a shop do it actually. But after 3 days, it?s not working too well. Frig is 68 and freezer is just above freezing. ARP control has boiler temp at 56 and fan temp at 105. Original frig was 175 for boiler and 130 range for fan. Ambient temps are high of 80, low of 50.

Are these boiler temps normal for these Amish units? Any other ideas?

 

[72cougarxr7]

I'm no expert on these, but the 56 degree boiler temp cant possibly be right!

I found ARP's website, it lists boiler temp of 185-195 Celsius.
https://www.arprv.com/norcold-cooling-unit-boiler.php

 

[8Muddypaws]

Why would you need an ARP on an Amish cooling unit?  Has one of them ever caught fire?

My suspicion would be that the ARP is the problem.  Can it be disabled?

 

[Gary RV_Wizard]

Why would you need an ARP on an Amish cooling unit?  Has one of them ever caught fire?

An Amish-built cooling unit is no more immune to off-level operation than any other.  The potential for overheating is inherent in the absorption fridge design.  Further, while the retailer of the Amish units claims they are of superior quality vs the OEM units, there is no statistical data yet to demonstrate that they are less likely to corrode or develop stress cracks or the various other causes of fridge failures.  I'd say the jury is still out on that.  When 10's of thousands of Amish-built cooling units have been in use in RVs for many years, maybe then we can relax a little.  I've seen at least two reports of early life failures of the Amish-built units, but no fires that I know of.

 

[Gary RV_Wizard]

Based on the numbers reported, those values appear to be in Centigrade. Even so, 56 cannot be right because that's not high enough to boil the ammonia coolant and the fridge would not cool at all.  However, it's easy enough to bypass the ARP until you get the problem figured out, thus eliminating a possible variable. Just pumper around the ARP, connecting the 12v input to the 12v output terminal that feeds power to the fridge circuit board.

The Amish-built units work at the same temperatures and pressures as the OEM Norcold units - the design is the same.  They have to work off the same heating source - those do not get changed when the cooling units are swapped out.

Are these numbers when running on 120v electric or gas? Any difference if you change heat source? One possibility is that only one of the two electric heat elements in the 1201 is working. That would reduce the temperature substantially. If it works ok on gas, I'd bet on a bad element or broken wire.