Date:         Thu, 23 Aug 2001 14:33:48 -0700
Reply-To:     Shawn Wright <swright@SLS.BC.CA>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Shawn Wright <swright@SLS.BC.CA>
Organization: Shawnigan Lake School
Subject:      Re: Refrigerator cooling: Do extra fans help?
In-Reply-To:  <20010823.120809.-103991.10.wilden1@juno.com>
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII

On 23 Aug 2001 at 12:08, Stan Wilder wrote:

> What works best on my Westy Refrigerators is:
> Pre Cool the night before with 110 v or Lp fuel.
> Put a can of ice cubes or pre cooled aluminum cans of drinks in the box.
> Install a little computer CPU fan with the heat sink up high on the wall
> or roof area on the interior of the box (use double sided 3 M tape). 12v
> dc runs on your car current.
> Fans in the rear might help but I never had to go that far to get my
> munchkin ice trays to freeze.
> Conditioning the fridge before you leave is the single most important
> thing I've found to enhance the abilities of the fridge. Once the
> interior temp is brought down the unit has no problem maintaining it.
> Without this pre conditioning it sometimes takes 12-20 hours to freeze
> the munchkin cubes, with the computer fan, can of ice it will be frozen
> in less than 4 hours. Your fridge will be at about 42 degrees or less
> within 2 hours. Once the temp is down remove the cvan of half melted ice
> cubes and stock your fridge.
> Strange but true.
>

I have found similar to the above, but also note this, learned from our
first long trip where we actually had more than 2 days of sunshine in a
row:

We spent 9 days at Premier Lake in BC (awesome spot, btw), where
daytime highs were usually from 30-35C, but it got down to 7-8C at
night, being in the mountains. I found the fridge had no problem
keeping cold for the whole time, since the cool nights gave it a chance
to "catch up". We were able to restock 8-10 cans of beer fairly often
(hey, it was hot! :) and it could cool them within a few hours, and keep
a gallon of milk and other small things cold quite nicely.
I suspect if the night temp did not drop so much, the poor fridge would
have been struggling a lot more.
The only problem I have now is the fridge no longer stays lit (on gas)
while driving ever since I pulled it out and cleaned the burner, etc. This
is still a mystery to me, as it seems the same otherwise.

ps: Historically, we've had such lousy weather when camping that the
fridge has been plenty cold enough, even freezing milk on several
occasions...========================
Shawn Wright
Computer Systems Manager
Shawnigan Lake School
http://www.sls.bc.ca
swright@sls.bc.ca