Thread: Camping Fridges in D3/D4

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or similar can be used in place of a wired-in dual battery.

It also depends on whether you are free camping at night and need to power lights as well as the fridge. I don't like chancing on draining the main battery as the D3/4 is so critical on voltage level.

But you could always get yourself a AVC
The 12 Volt Shop
I've used them for years on other 4wd's but are unsure if 11.8V is enough to start a D3/4 with.

Just use LED camping lanterns and head torches, no need to power lights from the car batteries.

Lots of good info here and it is easy to shell out for a lot of kit you may not need.

I went the 2nd battery option so I could use unpowered sites and still have reasonable lighting options. As we have to camp most times during school holidays, unpowered sites are often the only options left for us. I also run a few accessories when travelling, up to 2 x DVD players, UHF, fridge and inverter at the same time. I wanted to keep these isolated from the main battery and also run these off a separate fuse box. I'll shortly add a Ranga GPS as well

We did 5 days over easter unpowered and ran a 12v light for 4-5 hours each night to our site, ran a 25w 240v globe from an inverter to the tent for around 1-2 hours each night and the fridge for the best part of 2 nights without moving the car. The inverter did eventually give a low voltage beep after 2 days but the fridge and lights still kept going. Without lights, I'm sure the fridge would have run 4-5 days on battery no probs.

You will have absolutely no problems with a single battery. If you make sure you are at a powered site for extended stays and run it when you can off A/C to save your starter battery. At about $5 per night dearer for a powered site, its going to be long time before a 2nd battery and isolator kit saves you money.

I like my 2nd battery for the convenience and additional power options it provides me and I know the car will start no matter what power I've used.

If you also use your fridge as a fridge set at about 3 to 4 degrees and not a freezer at -18, it uses a lot less power. It's nice to have ice cream but frozen veggies and milk doesn't impress SWMBO...

Originally Posted by PaulGOz

Hello,

I have just come back from a road trip over a week. We are 2 adulkts 2 young kids. We have a Waeco dual Zone 50L and find it adequate as long as you do not need to carry 20L of soft drinks and 20L of beer it shoudl suffice.

I am not sure about the need for a second battery. I have found that with the standard 90ah starting battery and several hours driving each day that the car is able to run the fridge overnight. We made sure we didn't add anything to the fridge at the end of the driving day and only added at the beginning of the day so that the fridge only needed to maintain a temperature and not actually bring items down to temperature. I also ran the fridge a little colder during the driving day say 1 deg c and then let it run up 5 deg overnight. The fridge is also set on the medium setting which i think cuts out at 11.8v suffice to say this was never reached the lowest I have recorded is 12.25v.

In conclusion IMHO you can get away without a dual battery setup. Even more so if you take precautions as i outline above. Keep in mind though you are asking the starting battery to do somethign it is not designed to do i.e deeper cycling. I also carry a 240v battery charger and jumper leads and an extension lead (if at a powered camp site) and jumper leads as a last resort. None of this would help though if you are alone in the middle of nowhere and get it wrong.

Good luck.

Only a matter of time ( or another year to run the main battery life down a tad ) and you would get caught out. Day trips or expeditions where help is available ok, but IMO a risky exercise to push the envelope for more remote trips. I have found it remarkably ( disturbingly ) easy to run the main battery down to the level where it won't start the vehicle.

Check out the Evakool specials on now just click on the Home link below, for the price of a 60 litre Evakool fridge freezer compared to some of the more fancied brands you can also buy a Traxide second battery kit and a yellow top battery and then you will never have to worry about being stranded some where with a flat battery and warm beer.

Also check out how little power they use. I have one of these units and I reckon it is great value for the money.

Home

cheers,
Terry

The Australian made Evakool fridges are brilliant because they have extremely good insulation. As TerryO says, they use very little power. I have tried several fridges, and the Evakool wins hands down. Mine is now 10 years old and still fine, if a bit battered.

Does anyone know if their cheaper range have equal quality insulation, and do they use the Danfoss compressor or a Chinese one? Seems there must be a reason why they are so much cheaper.

Cheers,

Paul

Pretty good deals for evakool and accesories here. And free frieght

EvaKool 60 Litre 12v Portable Fridge Freezer Camping | eBay

Don