Outer Limits 4x4 Board

This may be dumb, but Pick 'n' Pay currently have 66 litre fridges on sale for $99; they are about 460 x 500 x 520mm in size on the outside. They are a proper fridge, with compressor, and about 85W. Chinese-made but there's nothing glaringly awful about the quality, at the price.

What about running one of these with a small, cheap inverter? You'd come out under $150 and have a real fridge...

Jason

Even with a 300W inverter costing $89 you would be way ahead of the game - I reckon it would work like a champion, engel fridges run off
200W inverter plugged into a ciggy socket no worries.

Plus if it shat itself you could probably rebuild it with better compressors etc.

Tom

Cheap pirce + made in China + a compresser = A peice of shit (oh no, bad experience thought returning)

searsy989 wrote:Cheap pirce + made in China + a compresser = A peice of shit (oh no, bad experience thought returning)

It is all relative isn't it.

searsy989 wrote:Cheap pirce + made in China + a compresser = A peice of shit (oh no, bad experience thought returning)

not neccessarily.

For that price and with a warranty from the retailer I say give it a go

Is it an uprigt type of fridge or a chest type like Engel/Waeco etc??

At that price you really can't go wrong, can you!!


Regards

bigbluemav wrote:Is it an uprigt type of fridge or a chest type like Engel/Waeco etc??

At that price you really can't go wrong, can you!!


Regards

Upright type. So you'd have to secure things in there a little bit I suppose... if you drive like I do anyway...

Jason

Wouldnt you have to run it in the upright position? If you laid it down there would be problems with condensor and fluid flow through it?

At least thats what the guy at the fridge shop said when I was moving houses and had my fridge, laid down horizontal in the back of a ute.

Were you planing to run it upright anyhow?

Deano wrote:Wouldnt you have to run it in the upright position? If you laid it down there would be problems with condensor and fluid flow through it?

At least thats what the guy at the fridge shop said when I was moving houses and had my fridge, laid down horizontal in the back of a ute.

Were you planing to run it upright anyhow?

I'm not planning to run it at all; it's to big for my SWB... I just thought it might be an idea for someone. But yep, you'd want to run it upright.

Story:

I did a little time working as a removalist, and normal household fridges were always left off for two hours after moving, to give the refrigerant time to settle again. This was an order from a government department that we did a lot of work for, as they discovered that if the fridge was rolled off the truck and turned on straight away the compressor would often die within a few days.

Their theory is that while the refrigerant is still stirred up from bouncing down the ramp, up the front steps and over the threshold it doesn't lubricate the compressor properly on startup (or some such story...) If the fridge is allowed to settle for two hours before turning on they found they didn't lose as many compressors.

This cheap chinese compressor may not like being shaken around, so it may not last long in the back of a fourby. But at that price its almost disposable.

Cheers,

Scott

dont forget you have to multiply the running current by about seven to get the start up current.
your inverter needs to bigger than that.

The other thing is they would not like the shaking at all and could break the internal springs or pipework inside the compressor housing.

BTW... the wait time after moving a fridge is to give any displaced oil a chance to flow back to the compressor and you cannot run them on an angle.

i have a 200W inverter in my truck for laptops / camera batteries etc and that can run a 34cm TV just, but the inverter has a 'strict' warning on the side of it, not to run anything such as a fridge / air compressor etc, anything with a compressor in it. i don't know why it gives this warning, but i thought i would let you know anyway.