[bstark]

The fridge relies upon a thermal connection of bonding material between a plate that connects the actual cooling portion in the back of the freezer to those fins in the fridge compartment below.

It also relies upon adequate cooling air to rise up the chimney behind the fridge cabinet to lower the temps of the brine solution (shed BTU's and return to liquid state) as it descends back to the boiler. Slideout fridges require convection current of air to take two right angles and that is something air flow resists; making right angle turns. Pancake fans help this immensely.

Air is the most difficult thing to change/control the temperature of so the less there is in the freezer/fridge cabinets the better. This requires that the freezer compartment AND fridge compartment have that air deplaced by food items.

A veritable catch 22 in that, to have the thing working efficiently requires that it's internal volumn be occupied by food stuffs but, if it's not working as designed, resultant spoilage is more costly.

My understanding of the workings of the "thermistor" Motor31 mentioned is that it's resistance changes according to ambient temps of fridge cabinet and I tested this years ago with a volt/ohm meter and a cup of boiling water alongside a cup of ice water but I've forgotten the actual ohm's readings I was able to detect to determine quality of thermistor ie: thermistor unplugged creating a 'constant on' condition so moving the thermistor to the warmer 'upper' air of the fridge cabinet, thus changing the resistance, would signal the fridge to cycle on more often and remain on longer.

The electrical heating element is a 360/375 watt element and it will not create the kinds of boiler temps that the propane burner should be capable of, ergo; your fridge 'should' be more efficient while on "gas" setting.

A small fan powered by 2 'D' cell batteries is often sworn to by users of being very effective in assisting the movement of air within the fridge cabinet to maintain a more consistant temp within the cabinet so that there is less discrepancy in temps between the upper and lower part of the fridge cabinet.

Many 'happy-hours' have descended into discussions of these fridges and their inherant failings: "What setting have you got yours on?" "I'm afraid to defrost mine because it might take two weeks to get the thing back to correct temperature!" "Mine won't go below 45 with it set at number 5". "we buy our grocieries one item at a time because the fridge can't handle any number of warmer items being inserted at once."

Anyone whose owned one of these things has heard all of these and a bunch more complaints about these gas absorption fridges for years.

Good luck to all with their DFF's - Dometic Fridge Follies.