Wednesday, Feb 06, 2002 at 01:00
Rich,
Below are the details of the aux battery setup of the 2 vehicles I have used the Liemack with.
Another point about the Liemack is that should you be camped anywhere that 240V power is available it is a trivial matter to connect the fridge to this supply since it runs off 240V internally anyway.
On the first vehicle (LR Disco 2) I had the aux battery installed before I bought the Liemack hence it was fitted with an isolater. The D2 is very crowded under bonnet so there wasn't much room to fit a decent sized battery. I am not sure what the capacity was but it was the size you find in your typical small
sedan. This battery would run the fridge for 36 hours but I found that as it discharged it didn't have sufficient reserve capacity to allow the fridge to start even though there was sufficient capacity to allow it to run. On my current vehicle (3l TD GU Patrol) I have 2 equal capacity starting batteries wired in parallel. This setup has allowed the fridge to run for 3 days without an engine start. I haven't tried it for longer than this yet.
Liemack stress that this is the battery arrangement that should be used with their fridges, ie. wired in parallel & no isolator.
The other point which Jeremy highlighted is that heavy duty cable needs to be run to the fridge. I had the cable supplied by the Liemack agent I bought the fridge from and it is something like 10mm^2 in area. Liemack supplies a sample of the required cable with the documentation that comes with the fridge. It is also necessary to ensure that the earth connection is 100%.
In summary - 2 (or more) starting batteries wired in parallel with heavy duty cable runs to the fridge should result in trouble free operation.
Hope this helps
Andreas
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