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Kevin Mooney
Nimpo Lake, British Columbia
In Search of Silence
2022 Ford F-350
2016 Eagle Cap 1200

I have a Dometic brand refrigerator/freezer mounted in a slide, with the intake and exhaust vents on the side of the camper. It’s a nice refrigerator, but I had an issue with the fan coming on very frequently when the sun was shining on that side of the camper, and/or when the temperature crept up.

These refrigerators are known for not being as efficient at cooling as the kind that has the exhaust vent going out through the roof. It all has to do with airflow; hot air rises more efficiently straight up versus sideways.

Some of you may have read a couple of my other mods I did which also included fans. I have been accused of being a tad anal-retentive about a few things, but a few bucks spent on a good fan makes life so much more comfortable.

My main goal in changing out the fan that came with the refrigerator was to make the unit cool better and to dampen the noise. Nothing spoils camping in a beautiful place surrounded by nature and silence more than a fan going off and staying on for many minutes at a time! Even while sitting outside, enjoying a few wobbly pops, you could still hear the fan go on and off. That’s just plain annoying.

The culprit is a standard cheap fan that most companies stick in their refrigerators trying to shave a few bucks off. Maybe these companies should actually put in top-quality components, then advertise that they do, and they will actually attract more customers who actually value quality and longevity over price. Just a thought!

Take note that the bracket they installed is designed to accommodate two fans. Now that might be handy, eh?

The original fan is a 92mm (3 1/2”) unit, uses .46 amps, 5 watts, spins at 3,500 rpm, pushes 60 cfm, and has a noise rating of 40 decibels.

I killed the power first. Then I cut the wires to the old fan and removed it. Next I had to figure out the best way to fit in two larger fans. The original fans just had two screws holding it to the bracket. That worked fine for the last seven years, so there was no sense going overboard on design here.

I measured up the hole spacing on the new fans and drilled a couple of extra holes. Then I put in 1 1/2” small bolts with nuts and Loctite so that I could position the new fans on top of the bracket, and gain a little extra space that I wanted.

Note the larger tube on the right. It gets hotter than the small one on the left, so I purposely crowded the left-hand side so as not to melt anything. By putting the bolts through ahead of time and making them tight, I didn’t have to try and get a screwdriver underneath somehow to tighten them. There is very little room to play with here.

I then added a washer on top of the nut you see. This was to make contact with the silicon padding on the fan. It helps with any vibration. Then I put a washer and nut on top and tightened them. Too easy.

For some reason, not all of these small fans are wired like you would expect them to be, probably because most of them are used in computers, etc.

After searching for a wiring diagram for the new Noctua NF-A14 PWM fan, I discovered that the one I purchased is a four-wire model; the positive wire is yellow and the ground or negative is black. If you buy the three-wire model, red is positive and black is negative, as one would expect. When you shop online from Canada, one takes what one can get!

The new fans are 5 1/2” in diameter, use .13 amps, 1.5 watts, spin at 1,500 RPMs, push 82.5 cfm, and have a noise rating of 24.6 decibels. Compared to the old single fan, the new setup with two fans uses almost half the power, spins at less than half the speed, pushes almost three times the volume of air, and does this at a quarter of the noise level. Now that’s impressive!

Not only are the new fans barely audible, but because of the volume of air they are moving, they cool the heating fins way faster and thus are on for much less time overall. This saves even more power and avoids annoying the occupants out camping.

I bought this camper used. When taking things apart, I noticed the previous owner had done his own mod to try and improve the cooling of the refrigerator. I left this shroud in place. I have made a similar one previously on another camper. It helps to concentrate the airflow across the fins.

The cost was about $40. It took a couple of hours. Hopefully, the refrigerator will last a few extra years. If nothing else, the refrigerator works better, cools faster, the fans go off and on way less, and it’s quiet. What more do you want?

This mod actually cost me considerably more because I did this last October, and it’s not noted for being warm in my part of the country. I had to drive south to Arizona and Texas this winter just to test it out. Time and money well spent!

Disclaimer: The modifications above are submitted by Truck Camper Magazine readers. It is your responsibility to make sure that any do-it-yourself modification project you undertake is safe, effective, and legal for your situation.

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