Thread: Portable Fridge

Drain plug would be nice on the Engel. Much easier to clean.

Old Engle,39l lives permanently in the D4,coupled to a Traxide dual battery system.

As said,always use a merrit plug,sometimes called a hella plug and you can't go wrong.

Don't have a slide,it just sits in the right hand rear corner behind the cargo barrier.

Personally I think the Engel is the pick for a fridge that "just works"
The ARB is an Engel (or at least the early versions were)

The waecos are IMO a damn fine fridge but they are let down by a really bad control board. You can bypass this...

All of them hate a lot of water

The engels use their own motor (sawa fuji) most other name brands use a danfoss which is also used in most domestic fridges. The cheaper clones use a chinese copy of the danfoss.

All of these fridges benefit from fitting a small (80mm) fan to recirc the air around (like most modern domestic fridges), you can choose to make this come on with the compressor of run all the time.
They also work better when filled as it is easier to chill "thermal mass" than to chill air. A towel of the bladder from a cask of wine works well to fill space and stop things bouncing around and smashing up on corrigated roads - nothing worse than pulling into camp to find you beers busted and you jar of jalapeno smashed with glass and pickled chillis everywhere.

Merit plugs or anderson plugs to replace the crappy cigar plugs supplied on most fridges is also a good option - and use good cable! voltage drop caused by drawing too much current over too small a cable will cause issues

Or why not go for the best...... (IMHO of course !).....
and try National Luna............

Sure they cost more, but from personal experience with other fridge brands (including waeco and arb), the NL Gear is a cut above.

Cheers

Originally Posted by komodo

Personally I think the Engel is the pick for a fridge that "just works"
The ARB is an Engel (or at least the early versions were)

The waecos are IMO a damn fine fridge but they are let down by a really bad control board. You can bypass this...

All of them hate a lot of water

The engels use their own motor (sawa fuji) most other name brands use a danfoss which is also used in most domestic fridges. The cheaper clones use a chinese copy of the danfoss.

All of these fridges benefit from fitting a small (80mm) fan to recirc the air around (like most modern domestic fridges), you can choose to make this come on with the compressor of run all the time.
They also work better when filled as it is easier to chill "thermal mass" than to chill air. A towel of the bladder from a cask of wine works well to fill space and stop things bouncing around and smashing up on corrigated roads - nothing worse than pulling into camp to find you beers busted and you jar of jalapeno smashed with glass and pickled chillis everywhere.

Merit plugs or anderson plugs to replace the crappy cigar plugs supplied on most fridges is also a good option - and use good cable! voltage drop caused by drawing too much current over too small a cable will cause issues

The recent Engels all have 2 fans already mounted.

A smaller unit up high (this is the one that ends up making a lot of noise) and a larger unit on the compressor unit.

Originally Posted by ~Rich~

I have a really old 29ltr Engel, I made up a lid which extended the capacity to the same as a 39ltr Engel.
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Be smart on what has to be in the fridge and you do not need a huge one!

I agree.

I suspect that it doesn't matter how big the fridge is, you can still fill it if you aren't careful.

I did a trip to the NT with 2 adults and 2 children and a trip to Broome with 2 adults. Our fridge on both trips was a 15 litre Engel that we borrowed from a friend. On the second trip we fitted all the fillets from a 71cm barramundi in with all the usual food. We never felt the need for anything bigger.

I am convinced that part of the secret is the shape of the containers. I refused to let my wife put anything in a round container in the fridge; it had to be a square container. The amount of space wasted by round, tapered or oddly shaped containers can easily halve the usable volume.

I'm not suggesting that you should look at a 15 litre, but I am convinced that a lot of people buy a fridge that is bigger than they need, pack it inefficiently, complain that it isn't big enough and at the same time complain about how much space the fridge occupies in the back of the vehicle.

Inside the cabinet I'm talking.
I know the big engel combi unit has a fan internally but none of the others to my knowledge. Happy to stand corrected

The only reason I went the 60l evakool over a 40l was that its the same width and length only taller so why not go the extra and it was only $50 more than the 50l