Monday, Dec 04, 2006 at 21:54
I agree with Andy, this is usually a low voltage at the compressor.
If you put the battery charger on and get the voltage up, does it do it then or only when the voltage on the regulator is showing around the 12 volts. The problem is that if the wires were not heavy enough for the distance between the battery and fridge there is a voltage drop and this is also current related. When the fridge trys to start it draws about twice the current that it does when under normal running so although the voltage at battery might be 12.3 volts, for that split second on start up it may drop to below the 11.7 volts that is required to start.
There is a way of allowing the fridge to start at a lower voltage by placing a resitor between to 2 bottom terminals. It is shown in the Danfoss website.
On the terminal block at the rear of the fridge the wires going to the bottom and third from the bottom are for the termostat. If you go to Super cheap or similar and get a wire with 2 aligator clips on each end and then place them between the 2 termostat terminals, then the fridge should run continuously. If this fixes the problem then it is a faulty thermostat. A new thermostat costs about $50 and you can install it yourself in a few minutes. A generic cyclic thermostat can be used in place of Waeco one. If it doesn't then it is more than likely a voltage drop causing it.
What I have done with our fridge was to run a heavy wire direct from Battery to Fridge and then used the existing fridge power wire to activate a relay. This reduced my voltage drop to almost Nil. The only downside is that the solar regulator doesn't record what current the fridge is drawing.
In another van we ran another heavier set of wires through cupboards from battery to solar regulator and then joined them all at an insulated terminal block. This had the same affect of reducing voltage drop, but you still get to see what amps it is drawing.
Brian
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