Because I am bored and it's boating related, I thought I'd report the
results of my search for and replacement of the original NorCold refrig on
the boat. I got several good suggestions here, but decided to replace it
with a NovaKool unit, primarily because it was locally available (picked it
up in my truck) and it fit perfectly in the wood enclosure on the boat
without having to do any modifications.

The original NorCold was a noisy son of a gun. The master bedroom
(stateroom for the nautical types) is located below the pilothouse area on
the Navigator. The galley and refrig is located behind the raised
pilothouse, resulting in the refrig being behind a bulkhead in the
stateroom. Whenever it ran (these type refers have a 50 percent duty cycle)
, the compressor hummed loudly in the stateroom. It used to take a night or
two on the boat to get used to the noise. The new NovaKool is silent.
Initially, I had to go check it once in a while just to make sure it was
running.

The other benefit is that it is bigger, internally. Due to the design and
placement of the condensing coils under it, rather than on the back, the
internal space in the NovaKool is over 9 cubic feet versus the 6.6 cubic
feet of the Norcold.

And it works much better. Since new, I had to keep the thermostat setting
on the Norcold almost all the way up to maintain 34-36 degrees in the refrig
section. I've had to back off the thermostat setting of the NovaKool to
less than half-way to maintain the same temperature without freezing stuff.

So, all in all, it worked out great. I like the feature of having the
freezer section on the bottom rather than on the top. And it holds more
beer, to boot.

Eisboch