Running 80 litre Fridge/freezer on standard LC100 Battery

I dont see why not as long as you turn it off when the engine is stopped.

If you turn the fridge off whilst it is not running it will not draw power and you wont have an issue. However the fridge will warm up, how much depends on the ambient temp.

I did this years ago with an Engel 39 in a Falcon. Actually ran it for 4 days without driving. Just idled the car 4 times a day for 15 min and cranked the fridge up whilst I was doing this. Last thing at night I gave it a good idle with the fridge up high, then switched the motor off and turned the fridge thermostat down, but NOT off.

Buy a cheap multi meter, $10, to check your battery voltage to guage where it is all at.

Of course. In fact you could run it for quite a number of hours without the engine running.

Had an 80lt running on our 80 series battery before the 2nd battery went in and had to drive car everyday twice to make sure the for falcon didnt have to pull us again!! BUT fridge was on the whole time though.

Laura

HI there , i have the 80 litre wacco and i used to use it on a single battery ( truck battery) before the upgrade just a few short months ago( second battery is a calcium marine battery not deep cycle)

done many weekend trips onto stockton beach - where i run the thing full stick so i could have ice cream on the beach in the middle of summer

summer time North of Bundaberg - same thing again -- ice cream / ice blocks for the kids on beaches at moore park beach - fridge was running all day -- i would use the Nissan for maybe a few hours a day - but the fridge was on 24 - 7...

as long as you run the car every few hours you should be fine --

I recently done a test - set the fridge to MAX and the temp really low in a warm car - it took 2 + days before the error light came on for low voltage ( on dual battery set up )

hope this is some indication for you

Boc

P.s if your cars a manual - you have nothing to worry about , if in doubt park on a hill :)

Con-Qld, it's not a matter of is it can do it but what damage you are dong for you starter battery.

Starter batterys don,t like slow discharging over a long period of time.

And deep cycle batterys don'tike fast discharges over a short period of time.

How ever starter batterys accept charging at a higher rate and deep cycles at lower rate.

If you want to use the one battery you may want to look at the new hybrid type batterys, we have never used them and the theory is great but they haven't been out in the market that long so time will tell.

The only other thing is if something goes wrong and you flatten your starting battery your stuck whereby with a dual battery it can still happen but very rare.

Is ou Landcruiser a auto or manual?

Regards Richard

Hi Con

It would be a good idea to fit a low voltage cut out and set it to the high setting. These are designed to leave enough power in the battery to start the engine.

My Evakool says it will switch off when the battery gets critically low but I never put it to the test. Mate had Waeco that drained the battery over two days despite the solar panels. He should have given the motor a good idle as well. Even with a second battery I turn the thermostat right up when I charge up using the gennie until the amp guage goes down to zero. The extra chill in the fridge helps a bit. My main concern is lowering the life of the battery because they can only cycle so many times before they are stuffed especially if you run them down a lot.

What I need to do now is run an extra cable to the second battery so it will charge faster off the vehicle circuit. The fridge is only using like the equivivent of a couple of parking lights but getting the battery to charge up quick will reduce the time the engine has to run.


Owen