Chescold fridge & vechicle batt.

Do an archive search, key words duel batteries, all your questions & some will be answered there.Regards Bob
27th June Gulf trip

Chescolds, are not really designed to run on 12v. Very inefficient!! Good on 240 and gas though. On 12v it will pull about 10amps and flatten your battery in under an hour. If you must (ie chuck it in the car while travelling, run on gas when you get there) fit, or have fitted a dedicated heavy duty plug/socket and cabling straight to your battery(second battery of duel batt system). Keep the cig lighter for your low load stuff.
Ferret

Aussie

As others have said the Chesscold is not great on 12V. I have a chescold and only ever run it on 240 or gas. By careful mangement of frozen and refrigerated foods using the chesscold and a large eski we have managed to go two weeks between butchers. We trravel as a family of 5 and that two weeks was on Cape York in May, travelling most days.

We run the fridge on gas overnight, that is usually enough to bring the temperature down so stuff in the side near the fins is frozen and the rest of the fridge is cool enough to keep the marg spreadable. We keep most of the frozen food in the eski and minimise air space in there. With a mix of frozen and vacuum packed meat two weeks is achievable.

I had my fridge serviced at the same time as a mate with the same model. The guy who did the service was very surprised that my mates fridge would actually drop the temp on 12v. He claimed never to have seen that before. He said mine was more typical in that it would, on a good day, hold the temp on 12v. That is not a great recomendation as it will almost do that not connected if I keep the lid closed. The other thing is that to work at all it MUST be level. That is difficult to achieve travelling along in the car.

If you must run a fridge while travelling then look for something else.

Good luck
Duncs

How unfortunate to read mis informed information on such a great forum. I have had a Chescold Fridge for 4 years and it DOES work fine on 12 Volt. I have a VX Commodore Acclaim Waggon and have an outlet in the back wired direct to the existing battery. As a safety precaution I have it set up so that when the ignition is turned off so is the fridge. (No flat battery). Now I have travelled a fair bit of Australia and in 40 Degree plus heat (remember that the A/C is always on as well so cabin temp. is not all that high) and the element in the fridge will actually frost up while travelling and keeps all contents cold. Can't have hot homebrewed beer at the end of the day. Have gone shopping for an hour and come back to the car and the element is still frosted with no power going at all. I have found the fridge works great if you turn it upside down two days before you turn it on and then fill up with food and beverages and away you go. It certainly works excellent on Gas and 240Volt but works just fine on 12 Volt as well. Maybe I have been lucky but as there are not too many 12 Volt/ Gas/ 240 Volt fridges on the market. I could not go past the Chescold.