Thread: OMG! Here we go.... Which fridge to buy :-)

Originally Posted by Numpty's Missus

Well....20l cooler for a long trip would not be big enough for me.

By the time you have beer, wine, soft drink, marg, eggs, unfrozen meat, a few sticks of salami or cabanossi, cheese, some yoghurt, baccon to go with the eggs etc etc etc I reckon you'd be pushing it to fit it in 20l

We have a 40l Engel. On a long trip (4-6 weeks) it is usually chockers at the trip start...as the trip goes on we can fit more beer

I suspect that the size of the fridge deemed to be necessary is in some way mathematically related to the size you have or the size you want. It's a bit like that old saying about jobs expanding to take up all the time available to complete them.

I did a trip to Darwin about a quarter of a century ago with a borrowed 15 litre Engel. With my wife and two kids, we never found ourselves wishing we had a bigger fridge.

About ten years ago I did a trip to Broome via Oodnadatta, the Tanami and the Gibb River Road. Once again the 15 litre Engel was plenty big enough. It even held the fillets from the 720cm barramundi I caught at Katherine.

I have been told by others that a small efficient fridge/freezer like an Engel or Danfoss based model can be used to supply quite a large icebox with ice. A 20 litre cooler would be useless. A 20 litre freezer is quite a different proposition.

I know this rather rambling reply doesn't really answer your question, but that is partly because at about the time I was going to have to face the same decision you now have to make, I bought a second hand camper which was already fitted with an 80 litre 3 way Electrolux. It performs quite satisfactorily.

I guess the point I was trying to make is that if you accept that you have a certain size fridge, sometimes it's amazing how well you can manage. So sometimes other factors like how you are going to fit the fridge in the vehicle and whether you are going to need to lift it when it is full become important factors.

budget?

simple fact is that bigger = more $$
hand made in Oz = more $$
thicker insulation = more $$
second hand = possible dubious history, less $$

old engels equivalent in reliability to new engels? I doubt it from regular hearsay that reliability has dropped with the introduction of electronics in the last X years.

Originally Posted by vnx205

..........Once again the 15 litre Engel was plenty big enough. It even held the fillets from the 720cm barramundi I caught at Katherine.

how skinny was the barra, or how big was the lure??

We currently have a 29ltre Engel and a Bushman 42 ltre.

The Bushman is great, uses b....all power and so far has been reliable. Cools to -22 degrees, this is the food fridge and the Engel is all MINE


Baz

We bought a 14 litre Engel in 1975 and did dozens of trips including the Kimberley, Cape York, Cobourg, Tasmania etc. This is still working well today.
Admittedly, had to replace components in the controller and had it regassed about 10 years ago.

In our Engel the evaporator was vertical right around the fridge, meaning it is a constant temperature throughout.

In 1998 we bought a 60 litre Trailblaza. The advantage of this over the Engel was that the evapourator ran horizontally around the fridge from bottom to top. This allowed the fridge to be used as a freezer in the bottom section and a fridge in the top. We separated top from the bottom with two sheets of poly styrene.

The Trailblaza has now been on about 15 trips including the Cape, the Calvert and Gove etc.

Both fridges have served us very well.

Originally Posted by Treads

I need to buy a proper fridge before the Cape trip next winter and have been pretty overwhelmed with all the choices of fridge. I'll be looking at around the 40-60L sizes and will need to fit it in the back of both the Disco and the Defender.

I was hoping to use it as the primary fridge on shorter trips, but as the freezer on big ones. So the idea was to get one of those $200 20L cooler/warmer types as the fridge for drinks, milk, butter etc on the big trips. Any other suggestions to this way of thinking?

What brands do people here recommend?

I have a fairly decent dual battery setup, but would consider a 3-way fridge if convinced of their merits

engel.........

i voted engel as i have two 32L and 40L with no problems

i do like the trailblazer but they are bigger overall

a mate of mine gets his custom made in brisbane, he is happy with his

anoother mate a seconds waeco 60L, he did have a hicup at the start but i cannot remember the fault

I think you should buy any fridge you like..............so long as its an Engel