Waeco RPD 190 fridge

Sure I will comment on the problem -

The door has a locking mechanism whereby a hook goes into a slot at the top and bottom of the door. The door to our fridge has dropped a few millimeters so that the hook now closes below the slot.

I am advised that the fix is merely an adjustment - will know more on Tuesday when I take the unit to the Waeco service rep.

Yup, some food was on the floor but not nearly the mess that Griff had to contend with at Copeton.

Jay

The door hinge on the fridges seem to be a weak link (all models). I place 6 litres of milk in mine and the door sags about 5-6mm below the catch mechanism. I'm replacing my plastic locks with positive fixed stainless steel locking mechanisms with knurled knobs. I think they are similar if not the same as what Brian has on his fridge and he sure tested them on his last trip.

The safety pin locks that were sold at Copeton and attach to the fridge between the freezer door and fridge door were a great secondary lock pin for peace of mind and sure stop the problem in its tracks.

The newer model seems to have a hinge that turns 90 deg and this sits the bottom hinge on the sill. The models that have this hinge dont seem to have a problem. I'm trying to source the hinge and retrofit it to my HDC-190 ( 3yrs old). It does involve milling a slot just under fridge to fit the hinge.

The RPD-190 uses a different mechanism to lock the door and is more susceptible to coming undone from sagging because the lock tang surface area is small. Hopefully an adjustment is all that is needed.

Anthony

Jay,
It is good to see that you didn't mention having beetroot and broken eggs spread over the floor like we had when our door came open. Not sure of the cause, but probably had one of those senior moments and forgot to lock it properly.

On our first fridge ( the same as what Anthony has) the hinge support bracket on the bottom of door only has a right angled bracket that screws into the cabinet. With ours we didn't realise when it started to develope a bit of movement in the door, that it was caused by the actual fridge cabinet bending slightly and allowing the door to drop. As Andy suggested we put in another washer and thought that we had fixed the problem. WRONG. The cabinet continued to bend and the door came loose again, and when travelling on rough roads with the door hinge a little loose, the movement caused the plastic insert in the bottom of the door to giveway and the hinge support bolt then pushed the plastic insert up inside the door cavity which is only polystyrene, which Waeco say is not fixable and a replacement door is $220. I fixed ours using fibreglass bog and then pushed the plastic insert into that. It was stronger than the original.
Eventually the cabinet holding the lower hinge gaveway completely and the door dropped down and outwards, preventing the door sealing. While in WA I had to swap the hinge from right to left to get it to stay closed and sealed.

In Melbourne we bought a new Waeco fridge and the later models have a double right angled hinge as Anthony has stated, so that it goes under the fridge and doen't put all the strain on the small front section of fridge cabinet.

In hind sight I should have done something to strengthen it earlier, but I didn't and then it was too late.

I think one fix would be to make a right angled hinge bracket with the part that fixes to the face of the fridge being between 50 & 70mm so that the weight of door on the bracket pushes the lower part of the support against the timber cabinet and and this should prevent the cabinet from moving outwards.

The other fix is to put a double angled bracket on the same as Waeco have on new fridges as Anthony is planning to do.

I would recommend that people with the single right angled lower support do something to have it strengthen before you have to replace the whole fridge like we had to.