Hello all. I have a newly acquired '85 Westfalia with the original
Dometic fridge (in good condition) that I have a couple of questions
about.

Question #1:This fridge seems to take forever to get cold. Is this
right? Here are my observations:

AC - (while plugged into the house) it took 2 hours for the fins to even
feel slightly cool. Didn't wait to see if it would get colder.
Propane - Got it lit no problem (I can see blue flame through the little
peep hole in the bottom of the fridge). I ran it for an hour and the
fins were nice and cold but there was a loud buzzing noise (question
#2).
DC - ran it while cruising down the highway for an hour without the fins
feeling cool at all.

The woman at my local RV place (Evergreen RV in Seattle, the local
authorized repair shop for the Dometic brand fridge) said that this is
all expected behavior!? She also said the 12V operation is only to
"maintain" the current temp and will not actually "cool" the
fridge.Therefore a scenario (as far as I can tell) for this fridge would
be to cool it overnight using AC, run DC while you are driving to your
campsite to maintain the cold, and run propane while you are camping
away from an AC source. So much for spontaneity. If this is the case,
most likely I will resort to using a block of ice in the thing.

Question #2: When running off of propane, I lit the stove, hung out for
5 min or so to make sure my van wasn't going to blow up, then left. When
I came back an hour later, the fridge was cold but it was making a loud
buzzing/humming noise. Definately too loud to sleep through. I turned
the propane off and a few minutes later the buzzing stopped. I restarted
the fridge no problem and in the few minutes I waited, no buzzing.
Anyone have any idea what is going on here?

Scott Semyan
'85 Westie