waeco error light coming on

There's one way of finding out. Remove the panel where the voltage goes into the fridge , and measure voltage on the power socket while the fridge is going. I'd take a punt and say its a voltage drop thing, possibly a bad plug.

Hey,

You fridge is suffering from a voltage drop. Your wiring to the fridge my not be big enough to cope with the current draw.

plug it in to 240V if it supports that and see if you have the same problem
im suffering the same problem with my cf-50 plugged mine in to ac and its fine, so im giving my deep cycle battery a big charge with a smart charger and try again, my cigg plug is wired straight to my second battery there shouldn't be a problem.

Cheers
Lyle

could be as simple as a dirty socket or plug,this may not be visable to the eye.one of the best cleaner of contacts is an ink rubber(eraser) as in cleaning model train track.slightly abrasive.low battery voltage caused by high resistance between supply and fridge.or even a loose connection.good luck.roger

aussichef
Had a similar issue with my 60l and in the end I dumped the cig lighter plug and wired it through 6mm wire (this is necessary to draw the current with minimal Volt Drop) direct from battery with "in-line fuse" near as possible to the battery, and an Anderson plug. No more problem. the left over male cig plug I also fitted an Anderson plug so I can still use my 240v adaptor. I now just have to unplug from the car and plug to male cig plug to use the 240v adaptor. Since this I have never again had an error light.
Colin.

People forget 1 basic thing of the Waeco 80 and 110 ,that being that it uses the bd50 and not the bd 35 as in the smaller models , the bd 50 works best on 24v not 12v or even 240v , the mobitronics "box" recomended for the 80/110 the mps 50 converts 240v to 24v NOT 12v ,,,, ergo Aussichef you have a case of voltage drop somewhere in your 12v line.

Both myself and my brother in law had the very same problem and after reading the manual closely it says to earth the plug wire right back to the battery negative post and NOT to the body of the vehicle as we had done. After we did this everything way fine. I am not sure how your plug is wired, but it is worth a try.

In both of our cases we had the fridge in the aluminium tray back of the vehicle and I suspect that aluminium or the mounting brackets do not conduct electricity as well as steel and that is why there was a voltage drop in the earth circuit back to the batteries own earthing negative lead that attached to the vehicle body.

Brian DJ

aussichef you hit the nail on the head when you mentioned that you are connected to the cigarette lighter. These things have light weight wiring, around 2-3mm or thereabouts and it is not capable of handling the current demands of a fridge. If you check the connection you will most likely find it is very very hot. Heat buildup increased resistance and that outcome gives you a fire risk as wel.

Simple test is to connect it directly to the battery and I am almost willing to bet it will run without the error light. Your comment that it runs fine on 240V supports this thought.

If it still shows the error light then the best bloke in Adelaide for Waeco is Ken Smith who does lots of their repairs and warranty work. He can be contacted on 08-82776200

Best of luck but I am hopeful the fix is an easy one

Regards

RobA

Where have you got the little slide switch positioned just above the inlet cord, on my 50l it has LOW, MED, HIGH.
I have mine switched to low when on 12v so that it tolerates less voltage, I think yours might be slightly different but it still has the 3 positions for the same thing.
Wazzaaaa

A couple of weekends ago we were down south and it was bloody hot (40 degrees in the shade). My error light came on and so did 2 others who had waeco's. Don't know if it was the heat that was causing problems and the fridge being on 2 high a setting. But it was odd that 3 of us had similar problems and no power problems from our aux power supplies.

I only ever have this error light come on when I switch on the turbo mode, must be pulling to much current through the cigi lighter so dont bother using it. When I get new vehicle I will put a plug direct to battery as others have suggested. Steve M

Hi,
Went up to Loveday on the weekend, a mates new 50 litre Waeco would only work on 240 v. He took it to the local camping shop waeco dealer and had the plug , battery checked. the error code said it needed to be returned to waeco to be looked at.
He rang Waeco today and returned it to Atlantic Refrigeration in Para Hills West.
Straight away they knew of the problem. Apparently there is a ceramic fuse behind to cover that does not like the hot weather.
This is going to take a week to look at. There work shop was full of Waeco fridges.
Itold him he should have brought an Engel !!!
Cheers
Matt

"There work shop was full of Waeco fridges" Thats because they are Waeco service agents. for a big part of Adelaide....go to a Engle service agent and you may see only Engles in for repairs, does this make them any worse than Waeco.

Waeco are as good as Engle and Engel are as good as Waeco, the reason you see more Waecos in for repairs or hear about them is that they sell 4 Waecos to every 1 Engel.

This is not because Waeco are any better or cheaper its just the way it is, Waeco is a hugh hugh company, if you had a look at there OEM catalogue you would be surprised.

Same as you hear more problems with the new Hiluxs than any other 4wd ute, why!.....they sell more.

I think we need to start a debate about Engel and Rays and ARB fridges to see which one is better (LOL).

Now about the problem.

1) What is your battery monitor swith on the fridge set to.
2) Try it direct to the bartery.
3) Try it when the vehcle is running.

The error light may be coming on for another problem, there was a batch that had a faulty board in them, Waeco replaces it under warranty.

Ring Mark at Atlanta and ask him about yor problem and tell him what you have found.

Your fridge has a 3 year warranty on every thing and 5 years on the sealed system so it should cost you nothing to fix.

Regards Richard

Mate I'd go with the first reply first. (Footloose).
We had the error light on BOTH 12 and 240v recently. (50l Waeco, 5yo).
Battery was fine - trip starting tomorrow - panic/think.
Cleaned ALL contacts (Fuse, earth, plugs), and 12v became fine. Found a loose wire on the Mobitronics side - 240v also good.
So what were the odds that both supplies would fail simultaneously ?
(btw.Ute drove out recently while still connected. "Distorted" a Britax plug, and dropped the transformer 5' onto concrete. Restored the plug, and all is well, so was I just lucky, or are Mobitronics more robust than I'd dared hope?)
Trust that all is well with your unit. Jeff.

Hi

If the fridge works OK on 240 volt AC through the invertor then it most likely the 12 volt DC supply in the vehicle.

At the risk of boring some of the respondents, as mentioned above, voltage drop is usually the initial problem. 12volt DC in motor vehicles can be very unreliable and the source of much grief.

High resistance caused by loose fittings, dirty connections and cables of insufficient current carrying capacity are often the initial cause of a cycle of 12 volt fridge problems.

Car cigarette lighters are potentially a high resistance connection due to the poor quality, low current capacity and inadequacy of the fittings. This applies to even the most expensive cigarette lighter fittings as they all rapidly loose there spring tension especially when bouncing along on rough tracks. Once arcing occurs and a high resistant joint heats up it causes even higher resistance in a never ending cycle until the connection fails. The arcing and the higher resistance cause an increase in amps due to the voltage drops. The increase in current eventually blows fuses and/or causes fridge electrical components to fail.

my recommendation is:
- Get rid of cigarette lighter connections.
- Hard wire the fridge in a minimum of 6 mm cross section copper wire. Use the same size wire for both positive and negative connections.
- Connect a fuse or preferably a circuit breaker in the positive cable close to the battery. Ensure it is of adequate amperage to handle fridge starting current. Fuse capacity minimum of 8 and a maximum of 10 amps will probably be ok. Some trial and error may be required.
- Keep the positive and negative cables run as short as possible, within reason of course. i.e. you don't need to place the wife on the roof rack and the fridge on the front passenger seat.
- Regularly check all cable connections for tightness and cleanliness.
- Blame the fridge only after you are certain that the supply cable connections are OK

Hope this helps
Cheers
Phil

Aussichef,
the 12v connection on the fridge (the 2 posts) could also be a bit dirty. Get a female spade connector and use it to scrape the posts, or even a small file just to clean them up a bit. I have even heard of peopl packing aluminum foil into the end of the 12v lead so that when you plug it into the fridge it gives better contact.
The lead Waeco supply is crap. You might want to make one up out of 6mm wire, thats what I did and there is minimal voltage drop when you do this.
read article 41792 where I quoted figures for voltage drop between waeco lead and home made lead.

Rob

Hi Warren
Havent had a chance to look at all the replies however the same thing happened to me. Mine worked on 240 but not 12V.
Problem was the pins where the plug fits on. These had accumulated dust and grime over a few years and as soon as I cleaned them up (used a bit of electra clean and fine sand paper) and presto fridge works perfectly.
It appears that it doesent take much grime etc to cut the 12V current.

Regards
Howard.

The differance in the plugs for the CF80/110 is it is straight and the CF18-60 is right angled.

The plug for the CF80/110 will fit the CF18-60 but not the other way around due to the right angle plug fouling on the casing of CF80/110.....I hope it makes sense..It did to me the 3rd time I read my reply.

Regards Richard