I got the 47 qt. ARB in Dec 2012. It's seen good use over the years, but last month it went wonky and stopped regulating the temperature. It would get a cold as possible. ARB has a 3 year warranty, so mine was out of it. But, after talking to Ryan in the Tech Dept. and sending a pic of the sticker with the serial number and a copy of my receipt, he sent me a box of parts for free.
I assumed it was the thermistor that went bad. That's the probe under the fridge that senses the temp and sends the signal to the computer. In older model ARB's (they have a yellow display) you have to cut a hole in the plastic, and remove some insulation to find the thermistor. Then cut it off and splice in a new end. Thankfully ARB changed that design and added a tube through the foam. You just have to remove the back cover, unplug the connector and pull out the thermistor. Replacement is the opposite. After doing that and going to lunch, the fridge still dropped the temp to single digits. We decided to test the old one with a multimeter and it seemed to work. The MM was set to Ohms. As I held the tip in my hand getting it warmer, the resistance dropped.
So the power circuit board and board behind the front panel were replaced. I don't think that power board changed anything, but there is a chip on the front panel board. The power board was a straight forward replacement. The front panel board was a p.i.t.a. To get access behind the front panel you have to remove the 6 caps along the blue plastic piece and remove the screws. There's almost no access to the corner screws because of the angle it's mounted and the wires connecting it. I used a flat head screw driver and slowly got the philips head screws to rotate 90* at a time.
Everything was buttoned up and on the drive home it seemed to maintain the temp. I did another test all day yesterday, with a 2 hour drive, 4 hour running off the battery, and a 2 hour drive home. Everything is working like normal again!
I think the failure was due to water ingress during the most intense rain storm of the season back in January. It rained about 3" in a 24 hour period. I remember the front of the fridge having water on it from a bad cargo door seal that morning, when the temp read -4*F on the front panel. I'm going to call ARB tomorrow and see if they will also send replacements for the plastic screw caps that got destroyed during removal.
Why go into all this detail? Well customer service. ARB is known for it, and I've heard many other stories where they go above and beyond to help their customers. That's a big consideration when shopping for something as pricey as a fridge.
