Footloose replied:

Sounds like voltage drop in the cable to me ?

Max - Sydney replied:

Steve

There is a three position switch marked something like "Low - Med - High".

On high it will turn of the fridge at quite a high voltage - on low it lets it run till the battery is quite low, but gives you the annoying red light. Ignore it, provided you are running off an auxiliary battery. You could get rid of it by putting in very heavy cables and direct wiring, but I suspect it will still sometimes flash.

Its just conservative settings - with an auxiliary you can run it much lower voltage than when the red light comes on, based on much agonised checking out.

Why bother to return from the Cape - its still winter down here?

Max

Derek from Affordable Batteries & Radiators replied:

Hi Steve,

Thin cables can cause voltage drop but a 75 a/h battery is not very big. Remember you will need to drive 4 hours a day to have enough power in the battery for the next 24 hours. Your light will be using about 2 or 3 amps over the 4 hours which will also decrease the fridge run time.

Regards Derek.

cackles replied:

we had this problem with our cf60 turns out it was a faulty power supply.
Get it checked out properly, they tried to fob us off with the whole 'it's your wiring' 'it's your battery' thing but finally after replacing the power supply 3 times they gave us a new fridge.

cackles

Member - Vince B (NSW) replied:

Hi Steve.
I had the same problem last year while touring outback Qld.When I returned home I switched my connection to an anderson plug & the problem was fixed.
Regards.
Vince

Hairy replied:

Yep, All of the above mate could be a combination of all of them. Try with the switch first, if not run a heavier feed from your battery otherwsie run your car and keep your fridge going till you get home and take it to your waeco dealer.
Good Luck
Cheers

raunchy replied:

HI Steve, the High Med Low switch is the switch which sets the voltage at which sets the voltage at what level the fridge shuts down to protect the battery. Set it on Low and see what happens.
I think your battery may be a bit small if you are not driving every day
The amp rating of you battery is as follows. A 75 Ah battery means you can draw 3.75 Amps an hour every hour for 20 hours. If you go over this, the battery becomes less efficient and will not last as long, i.e if you draw 7.5 Amps an hour you will not get 10 hours running. Based on what you have running your battery should be fine if you are driving every day, and depending in what the outside influences on the fridge are, i.e how often it is opened and restocked, and the ambient temperature, it may be possible to get a couple of days out of it. You fridge will draw 5-6 amps when running, if it is running 30% cycle, you are drawing 1.8-2 amps/hr. If you are running 50% cycle coz the weather is hot and you open the fridge lots, then you will be drawing 2.5-3 Amps/hr.

Wiring is the single largest issue with Waecos playing up. If you have good wiring most problems dissapear. Waecos draw more current but operate for shorter period than an engel, thus even though they draw similair from your battey over time, Wiring problems are exposed more readily. At times I run a CF 50 an a CF 25, both have the same compressor as yours. I have 10 sq mm wiring to anderson plugs, run the 25 as a freezer and run an ARB light for 1-2 hours when away. I have a 105Ah battery. I can squeeze 24+ hours out of this if it is not too hot and I dont open the fridge too much

Also you will need to chuck out the cig plug, I have also found the hella plugs to be unreliable. And rewire your fridge directly to the battery, make sure you fuse the cabling in case of a short. Using Anderson connectors is the way to go.

Hope this helps
Regards Ray

raunchy replied:

Hi Mike,
Just trying to make it easy to understand. The point I was trying to make I think is made pretty well. If you have a battery with 75Ah on it. what does it mean??? Does it mean I can draw 75 Amps from it in an hour before it is flat?? I have found that most automotive type deep cycle batteries are rated to a 20 hour rate. Whereas Solar, UPS etc batteries are rated at the 10 hour rate. This is due to their construction and peukerts law is taken into account in the number of hours the battery is rated at supplying the said current. If you can find the info on the batteries, sometimes it is hard. the manufacturers will state 75Ah @C20. So for this battery you can draw 3.75 Amps per Hour (or Ampere hours) every hour for 20 hours (3.75X20=75). A good battery should also give you a c3 rate, which is the rate you discharge over 3 hours, but I have not found this to be the case with Auto batteries. The other factor to take into account is the temperature as this effects the batteries considerably, most batteries are tested at 20 deg celcius
As part of my job, I have designed, installed, commissioned and removed thousands of battery systems in the last few years alone, from solar and wind systems to UPS and backup systems.

Sam from Weipa Auto Electrics replied:

Allright guys there is a fault with the new cf60 range of waeco fridge inside the have a sort of fuse that is building up to much resistance and causing the fridge to error you will find it will run perfectly on 240v and not on 12v so take it back to an authorised waeco repair agent and you will be on you're way againd cheers