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Re: Regular fridge in a van?
Lister #746681 March 27th 2019 1:21 pm
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No red flags. But I've no experience with that specific brand. Nor have I read anything about them from those.that own them.

Make sure the cooling unit vents are not obstructed in use. And the ciggy plug feeding it should be some thicker copper.

Always best to bypass.ciggyplugs and receptacles. If one can do so.without voiding warranty.

Re: Regular fridge in a van?
Lister #746682 March 27th 2019 1:30 pm
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Cool. Definitely would be going in it's own dedicated circuit I'll have to look into the plug and what can be done with that.


[Linked Image]
Re: Regular fridge in a van?
Lister #746683 March 27th 2019 2:49 pm
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I think a lot of portable fridge failures are caused by a weak intermittent connection where the ciggy plug nipple meets the back of the receptacle, This spring loaded nipple (+) is always pushing and trying to work the rest of the plug back out of the receptacle. Add a bunch of vehicle vibrations and there is at some point, where it barely makes contact and can be turning on and off dozens of times per second which i think is tremendousy stressful on some electrical componets within the compressor controller

There are many better ciggy plug designs, like the one from Blueseas, and its matching plug which can kind of lock together, I own one pair and am not all that impresed with the locking. Also, using this connector driving some LED lights through a PWM LED dimmer, when dimmed, the plug receptacle was emitting a high pitched humming from within the connection. This hum could be made to change tempo or eliminated simply by forcing the plug deeper into the receptacle, but the second I let off the high putched whining would begin again, and this is from a 12v ciggy plug/receptacle designed from scratch to eliminate most of the inherent weaknesses in the spring loaded worldwide ubiquitous design, and it is still an unreliable highly resistive connection prone to failure..

All these portable fridges have to have some sort of access panel to get to the fridge compressor and compressor controller. Inside of this there is likely a spade connector with a matching 1/4" quick connect insulated wire termination representing + and - 12-24vdc input.

There are these Piggy back connectors:
[Linked Image]

These should allow one to easily run their own 10 or 12awg wiring ( fused at battery) right to the fridge's compressor controller, completely bypassing the ciggy plug receptacle and the fridges own 2 pin connector on the fridge body. The fridge will get a higher battery voltage, with much higher reliability, and the battery protection settings will be more accurate and not shut the fridge down and spoil food when the battery is not in any danger of being overdepleted.

If one takes care with the access panel screws, and needs to warranty the unit, they can then remove their piggyback spade connectors, return it to stock, button it up, and they can't say the warranty is void because you cut the cord of the ciggy plug.

45 to 27 watts consumption is about right, but the question is how many minutes per hour does it run?

In 75 f ambient, keeping 32.5f internal temps, mine runs about 4.5 minutes on, 12 to 15 minutes off. it depends on door openings and the amount of food already cooled to temperature X, within.

Inside the access panel, there will be the compressor, compressor controller and the condenser, the finned part which gets hot. The condenser will likely have a fan on it. This fan is likely a sleeve bearing Piece of donkey doo doo.

HUge gains in efficiency can be obtained with a higher quality fan designed to evacuate the heat from the condenser to the atmosphere. Extra insulation of the fridge body, but that which allows maximum heat extraction from the condenser is the way to make fridges more efficient and reliable, and can take a significant load off the battery powering them.

These fans can easily get loaded with lint and dust, which will also limit the ability of the unit to extract heat from food items and expel that heat to atmosphere. So one might want to familiarize themselves with just how to access the fan in order to clean it.

My fridge is always on, and I employ an air filter on the intake. The upgraded 120mm Noctua A12x15 fan attached to the 120mm condenser( which looks like a mini car radiator) pushes air through the condenser, across the compressor and compressor controller, then into the next cabinet compartment, which can either be outside the van or inside the van, or both. Essentially I am pulling the coldest possible interior air source across the condenser once, and push it out of the compartment all with one fan that comes on with the fridge compressor. Every 4 to 5 weeks the white filters I taped into place on the intake are brown to black and loaded with dog hair, human hair, clothes lint and other dust like particles. I can vaccuum them mostly white a few times before I replace them. Even with this filtration, a very fine film of dust builds up on the fan blades and leading edges of the condenser fins, that I clean once every 1.5 to 2 years.

You can just plug it in and go, but you can also add a lot of spit and polish to get more out of the design to improve efficiency and reliability, if one is so inclined.

The internal fan can also be a source of noise that might be louder than the compressor itself. Generally the fans make more noise when the restriction( condenser) is directly on the backsides of the fan blades. A fan like the Noctua NF-f12 or the A12x15 are designed to push air through a restriction. When I modified my fridge's fan to push instead of pull, and used the Noctuas, the fan noise went to inaudible and the time the fridge ran each cycle on was reduced by about 30 to 40 seconds. The Noctua NF-f12 only draws 0.05 amps, compared to the fan my fridge came with which draws 0.13 amps. Noctua fans come with a 6 year warranty and once they get the proof of purchase a new fan arrives from Austria in less than 5 days. They also might send a prepaid UPS label to get the failed fan back to inspect.

It is good to see prices dropping to the 300$ level on portable 12vdc compressor units. The offerings in the last 15 years have mostly been in the 500 to 800$ range, like those from Norcold, Dometic, Vitrifrigo, Engel, ARB, National Luna ,Truckfridge, Indel-B, and a few others.

I hope they did not have to cut too many corners to meet this price range.

Having owned Norcold, i am very much Biased towards fridges emploing the Danfoss/Secop bd35f compressor.

The Norcolds sawafuji compressor was very loud and would induce harmonics from the vibrating swing compressor. How well this swing compresor's vibrations are dampened play a huge part in the total noise made.

But I found the Danfoss to not only be 1/3 the noise, but also more efficient, as it has the 120MM condenser and 120MM fan. The Norcold lasted 5 years, the Vitrifrigo is on its 7th.

Re: Regular fridge in a van?
Lister #746687 March 27th 2019 3:30 pm
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Holy crap! Once again you have come through with more info than I could have even known to ask for! Thank you so much!

I agree that the cig plug isn't ideal. I never thought about disconnecting it inside of the fridge though. That is a good idea. Also your info about the fans / compressors / filters is very helpful. I think I'm going to give this unit a try and maybe try some of the more simple improvements you mentioned to start with to see if i can improve it even more.

Thanks again!


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Re: Regular fridge in a van?
Lister #746704 March 27th 2019 11:44 pm
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Well to be clear, I was not necessarily advocating removing the 12v feed wiring on the compressor controller, but instead adding new wiring to the controller via the piggy back quick connect fittings, thus bypassing the ciggy plug receptacle as well as the connector on the fridge body itself

There is likely a receptacle on the portalbe fridge body into which one plugs the cord with the 12v ciggy plug on it. There might be a separate one for 115vAC too. If one does run new wiring via the piggyback quick connects then the pins on this 12vdc receptale on fridge body would be live, and could be shorted out, perhaps frying the compressor controller. So disconnecting the original 12v wiring would be safer, but then if one wanted to use the 12v ciggy plug in a different vehicle, one would have to disassemble the cover and replace those original wires.

One could simply prevent the pins on the 12v plug on fridge body from being able to be shorted by sliding some wire insulation over the pins or perhaps some heatshrink, or a piece of ducttape over the whole receptacle plug to prevent something metal from accidentally bridging the pins, if they are exposed.

The ciggy plug can be used for a while before it becomes problematic, but it is just a matter of time and the amount of current it is asked to pass. If the plug fits tightly in the receptacle and or can be secured so that it cannot back out then one can have more confidence in it. But, these ciggy style 12v powerport electrical connections are an insult to 12vDC and in any important duty should be eliminated/bypassed, in my opinion.

I use Anderson powerpoles as my DC connectors. They have 15/30/45 amp connectors that all use the same size plastic plugs and can interchange, it is the contacts inside which are designed for different gauge wires. In general the 30 amp will accept 14 and perhaps 12 awg wire, and one can use a regular dimple crimper to assemble them, if one has soe crimping experience.

The 45 amp powerpoles can accept 10 to 12 awg wire and are much harder to crimp, without their special crimping tool. Which i should have purchased earlier than I did.

I run 40 amps continuously through these 45 amps Anderson powerpoles, and as an experiment I actually started my engine through a pair of 45 amp anderson powerpole connectors, which was close to 180 amps, 90 amps each, for about 3 seconds.

One issue with anderson powerpoles in place of a ciggy plug, is one loses the internal fuse incorporated inside most ciggy plugs, and which is also a common failure point inside the plugs.

I've been adding my own ATC fuses using two insulated quick connect 1/4 inch fittings on an ATC fuse of the proper rating for the wire.

While I have no less than 7 ciggy plug receptacles I added long ago, they are now mostly entirely unused. The Items I do use them for cannot exceed about 10 watts, or less than 1 amp at 12v.

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