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Inverters waste ~20% of the electricity required to run the appliance.
Also the inverter will be running, when the fridge compressor is not. Most will run about 20 minutes per hour, but this can vary widely. The inverter even if powering nothing, is using some amount of battery power.
My one inverter uses 0.6 amps each hour, tunred on, powering nothing. for 0.6Ah consumed every hout
My fridge uses averaged 0.67 Ah each hour in sub 75f ambients the last I checked
basically if you have an AC/DC fridge, and you choose to run it through an inverter off of battery power, you are wasting battery power, and a significant amount of it.
The only advantage is you get to bypass the shitty ciggy plug cord and the shitty ciggy receptacle and its undersized wiring between battery and fridge.
This temperature swing is common in the industry. Not just in portables but domestic. I had a SubZero built in fridge and was amazed at how long a head of lettuce would last in the crisper drawer without getting slimy. I remarked one time about this to a friend that worked for Drs without borders and he mentioned that subZero was one of the few fridges for the consumer market that had low enough temp swings to allow temperature-sensitive vaccines to be stored in them. I don't know if that standard is followed today? Or if it extends or ever extended to the portable units.
I know we are talking about the ARB and such but I am just adding to the thread for others. How temperature sensitive is the medication? Surely not as critical as vaccines?
Cigarette plugs were designed for lighting cigarettes using them as such is stupid using them for anything else is double stupid.
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• Blanch (09-15-2018)
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09-15-2018, 03:32 AM
(This post was last modified: 09-15-2018, 03:41 AM by MN C Van.)
nice. We're all stupid.
Sometimes dweller in 237k miles '07 Grand C-van w/ a solar powered fridge and not much else
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Ciggy Plugs
Better for convenience but for happy trons I totally agree with
SW... use bigger wires and as short as possible ............is the best way to go.
Voltage drop is NOT your friend !
If not today , put it on your list of future upgrades..
(This applies to speakers too.)
stay tuned
popeye
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• Blanch (09-15-2018)
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09-15-2018, 10:11 AM
(This post was last modified: 09-15-2018, 10:20 AM by tx2sturgis.)
Blanch, IF your new fridge is sitting somewhere close to where your old built-in fridge is installed, and IF that built-in is/was a 3-way unit, then you have a handy place to hardwire the new ARB into.
Under, or behind, or near the old 3-way fridge will be a terminal block of some kind that has a robust 20 amp DC circuit for feeding the 12v heater that the 3-way unit used. Quite often this terminal block can be seen after removing the lower fridge (outside) service vent panel. This terminal block can be used to easily power the ARB.
You would need to cut the factory 12v cigarette lighter plug off the cord, and hardwire to those terminals, observing proper polarity, of course.
Virtually all warranty exchanges on items of this type with removable power cords do not require the cordset to be included, UNLESS the cordset is suspected as part of the warranty issue, so dont worry about cutting it.
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• Blanch (09-15-2018)
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Blanch, since you're on writing terms with the manufacturer's representative, might I suggest writing him and ask about what you're being told, and how he would view a warranty claim on a modified product.
Sometimes dweller in 237k miles '07 Grand C-van w/ a solar powered fridge and not much else
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• Blanch (09-15-2018)
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cigar lighter plugs/receptacles are poorly designed. Only good for fast warming an element for a short time.
The plug's male end is spring loaded, which means there is a constant pressure on the plug to back out of the socket. Vibrations intensify that effect.
It was a convenience for smokers.
It became a de facto standard for portable devices used in vehicles. CB radios. Phone chargers. GPS. Not high current devices.
Then came RoadPro cookers. Refrigerators, etc.
Now we live in our vehicles and are using that plug far outside of the original design parameters.
Correctly sized molex connectors would be better for dependable plug and play usage where current is higher than trivial.
Otherwise hard wire the fridges/freezers. A 65 qt Whynter is not exactly something you carry around outside of the vehicle.
Why don't they fix it? Profits. The manufacturers want to install all of the equipment in dash rather than allow proper plug and play with the consumer having a choice. Higher profit margins on fully loaded vehicles.
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• Blanch (09-15-2018), TWIH (09-15-2018)
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I don’t want to contact the tech again. I had to apologize to him for my behavior , I was pretty pissed when I thought he was going to ship the same unit back with zero repairs. And I fear I would get very pissed again after all I have read here. Obviously they are aware of the issues with the product and inferior cigarette plugs. I look at the gauge of the wire that goes to the cigarette plug in my RV and there is no way it is robust enough to power this thing. I have roughly 12 gauge wire running 20 feet from the battery to the cig plug in the RV (this is part of the original RV construction) I am guessing this caused a lot of my problems.
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I would be surprised if they actually used 12awg from the factory to wire your ciggy receptacle.
According to Danfoss/secop that length of wiring would require 8awg., and 8awg is so overkill for justy 6.5 amps of load and just shows how susceptible these fridges are to voltage drop.
When i first got my Vitrifrigo, I had to modify the cabinet slightly to accommodate it, and would put the fridge on my bed platform. I have another set of 12v outlets, fed by 12AWG, that I was using to power the fridge while i worked on the cabinet, but likely about 16 feet of it feeding the fridge, and when the sun was shining, the fridge worked well, but as soon as late afternoon came and battery voltage fell to 12.8 or so, the condenser fan would come on, but the compressor would not. I freaked out a bit, but then ran a much shorter 12v extension cord to the fridge and the compressor fired right up.
The issue above occurred with no shittastic ciggy plug or receptacle in the circuit.
The ciggy receptacle design, was intended to actually be a resistance heater, to light a cigarette, and if the wire were undersized leading to it, it would just take longer to heat to the point it could do the intended task.
When used as a power outlet, ,the spring loaded nipple tip is pushing on the + at the end of the receptacle, and the sides of the plug are pushing against the sides of the receptacle which is ground. it is basically a friction fit, whose spring is trying to push it out of the plug.
The design was never intended to pass large wattages for long periods. In some of the plug designs, the spring itself is used as a conductor. I've opened up many ciggy plugs just to see how they are designed, and why they failed. and there is a generic style of plug, and I was very disappointed to see this generic design provided with my buddies ARB. The same design came with my 400 watt inverter, but with a warning label saying no more than 120 watts, which is s joke, as no way could it handle that much juice.
Even the best design, that blueseas, is seriously lacking, and it has some extra features to try and lock the plug into the receptacle to exert more pressure on the positive tip.
I still use ciggy plugs, despite my seething contempt for them, as they are convenient push on pull off fused connector. but I only use them on items drawing 25 watts or less and that if they lose contact, are not mission critical.
I have one LED light, employing a ciggy plug, that uses a PWM led dimmer. Pulse width modulation is basically turning the leds on and off quickly to achieve the dimming function.
When i would dim this led light, even using this top quality Blue seas receptacle, I would hear a humming coming from the receptacle itself, and putting more pressure on the plug itself could change or eliminate the noise, but it would return.
The LED light draws a max of 23 watts, and the spring loaded nipple tip was showing its inability to make a solid electrical connection at this relatively low current when the current was being pulsed quickly.
Even if the portable fridge makers were to provide a robust ciggy plug, they can do nothing for the undersized and long lenght of wiring leading to the receptacle. If they advertised that the end user had to provide their own 12v connection to the battery or the unit would not work properly, they would sell nothing, as the modern consumer is basically trained to be inept and entitled.
The Anderson powerpole connector in the 15 30 and 45 amp flavors are all interchangeable, but one requires the 45's for 10AWG wire. The 45s basically require the special crimping tool. These connectors are not perfect, but I can and do pass 40 amps for an hour through them without issue. They do get warm passing this much.
Any mission critical DC electrical connector, I now use these instead of SAE connectors, or anything else.
Note that when eliminating the ciggy plug, one is also eliminating the fuse. inside the ciggy plug itself, and that fuse rating is designed ot protect the wire exiting the plug.
Danfoss's directions also say to not share any buss( fuse block/ buss bar) with any other device, but to wire fridge right to battery termnals itself with its own dedicated wiring, fused a the battery. This is Ideal. Ideal is rarely achieveable.
I had to wire my Negative to shunt on my battery monitor, which is a shared buss. So be it.
The ARB sounds mission critical. When run on DC it needs to have a short thick circuit to the battery with as few connections as possible. Ciggy plugs receptacles and stock gauge wiring are anything but reliable, and the ciggy plug provided with most DC products is an insult to DC electricity. They do not really have a good option otherwise, as any instructions saying that it is not a simple plug and play would eat into sales. It is not their fault the ubiquitous 12v ciggy plug worldwide standard is so fucking shitty.
They should however provide a thicker gauge fused wire with ring terminals to hook directly to battery terminals with directions saying this should be used in any mission critical application.
But this might also eat into sales, as it means it is not just plug and play, and plug and play is how the modern consumer has been trained to consume.
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• Blanch (09-15-2018)
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I am thinking on all of this. I believe this winter I will do some wiring while in Q. I believe I will have 110 available until then. Perhaps I will run a dedicated wire from the batteries to the ARB with an inline fuse. I also might also upgrade to golf cart batteries. All this, as usual, depends on money.
Thanks for all the info. It is appreciated. I’m learning.
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