Shameful Engineering by Norcold

As you all know by know, Norcold Refrigerator hinges, in particular the lower one, just fail and many times the door ends up on or nearly missing your foot.  A dangerous and shameful "brilliant" job of engineering.  Some overpaid MO FO decided it was a great idea the make the hinges out of a very weak plastic.  Of course, anyone with a lick of common sense should know what would happen.

Many RV dealer employees were looking out for their wallet, at the expense of their loyal customers, by charging hundreds of dollars to replace the hinge.  BUT, of course, going back to the old common sense thing, without reinforcement, the replacement hinge, being the same weak plastic, failed again shortly.  Shameful how some of these dealers were ripping-off customers.  The two pic's below show the broken lower hinge:

Norcold came out with a METAL (gee, imagine that) clip-on reinforcement bracket that cost about $.25 to buy by the millions, that they shipped to their numerous dealers to sell for between $25-45.  This "hinge reinforcement kit" consisted of two of these clip-on brackets and two 1/4" Zinc flat-washers (Norcold Part # 634166).  After receiving the parts, I was shocked at how much I paid for so very little!  To replace the broken door, you must order the entire door (Norcold Part Number 628459).  Below are pic's of the replacement parts:  

 Hinge Reinforcement Kit:

Model Number Tag Inside Fridge:

I used "JB Cold Weld" Epoxy to reinforce the lower hinge.  I mixed and applied it with a 1/4" flat-blade screwdriver.  It dries solid in 24 hours to a Grayish color.  I repainted it black with a spray can.  Here is the reinforced and repainted hinge with the lower hinge reinforcement bracket installed:

Here is the top hinge reinforcement bracket (Gorilla Glue used to secure it in place):

Here is the finished installation.  The Zinc flat washers are used under the lower hinge.  This raises the door toward the top hinge putting more weight on that hinge and less on the bottom.  Adding in the thickness of the lower bracket (about 1/8"), I only needed one washer to raise the door up slightly over 1/4".

   

The weight of the real-wood door panel added to the hinge stress.  The wood more than DOUBLES the weight of the door.  The total cost of this project was about $122 and about 2 hours of time.  The LEAST Norcold could have done to make this horrible engineering up to their customers is pickup the replacement costs, whether that be at a dealer or DIY.  

What many people have done to avoid further dealing with the company is when the Fridge needs to be replaced, instead of buying another Norcold or Dometic RV unit, they just buy a regular home Fridge and retrofit it, for about 1/3rd - 1/4th of the cost.  I have no tolerance for this type of inexcusable customer service.