Refrigerator Door Seal

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NautiBits
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Refrigerator Door Seal

Post by NautiBits »

The upright built-in fridge is only chilling down to 40 deg f. High temps between 3pm until 7pm hover around 50. We have a new compressor and the system is fully charged. The evap/freezer will freeze water bottles solid, but ice cream is more like soft-serve (still tasty....H-D rum raisin...yum!!) The compressor is the air-cooled 'Cold Machine' version. We do have ac keeping the interior between 71 and 85. The door seal fails the dollar test. The seal is about half the size of the stock Cleanseal #342 (posted somewhere on this forum). Assuming a stock fridge box, what has been done to increase efficiency of cooling? Does it perform better with the Cleanseal #342, or some other version? It is just the two of us and we are pretty ruthless about opening the fridge door.

Any ideas?

Joe Mc
Joe & Deb
s/v Cat's Meow
2000 Classic 36086
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maxicrom
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Re: Refrigerator Door Seal

Post by maxicrom »

Not sure what area you are in, but I found a local source for rolls of industrial grade gasket material by searching for rubber gasket products on the web. Ours is the old style box with the lifting cover, and I installed 7/16" by 1/2" wide gasket material around the door and it seals pretty well. I also used 3m automotive trim adhesive with the provided adhesive surface, been in place for about 4 years now. As for Ice cream - we have a large cold plate that forms a glacier on it, but Ice cream won't keep unless we put some sort of barrier keeping the cold to the back area. The box is just too big keep the median temp for ice cream. You could try adding plastic strips like the grocery stores do to keep the cold in the open dairy cases and create a freezer area. Anything that is touching our cold plate freezes, but 3" away and it won't stay frozen.
Mike & Linda
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NautiBits
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Re: Refrigerator Door Seal

Post by NautiBits »

Hi Mark,

I'm in Corpus Christi, TX on the western end of the GoM. I'm interested in ideas that work, so I'll add yours into the mix. I'm hoping to hear from a few folks that have the new-fangled built-in fridge too. Corpus has a pretty good industrial supply infrastructure. I dropped into a gasket place, but they didn't have any extrusions (like the 'D' shaped CleanSeal #342). I dropped into a nut and bolt place that had the little 8-32 half inch screws I needed for upgrading my sliding glass door.

Thanks again,
Joe Mc
Joe & Deb
s/v Cat's Meow
2000 Classic 36086
NautiBits
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Re: Refrigerator Door Seal

Post by NautiBits »

I finally got to this job last weekend. Fridge temp dropped from about 50F to 38F. Frost up around the evaporator is minimal too!

I cleaned the door channel and carefully placed a 1/4" thick by 3/8" wide adhesive-backed strip of EPDM foam in the bottom of the channel. I stuffed a 'D' shaped silicon rubber hollow seal, about 1/2" wide all around, into the door channel. It was a 'squish' fit that required no adhesive. These seals were sourced from McMaster-Carr. I think they are working well. I left the original fridge-side seal in place(I may replace it down the road a piece). The door closes firmly against both seals.

So far, so good.
Joe & Deb
s/v Cat's Meow
2000 Classic 36086
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