Date:         Fri, 13 Apr 2007 00:23:24 -0700
Reply-To:     Mark Drillock <drillock@EARTHLINK.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Mark Drillock <drillock@EARTHLINK.NET>
Subject:      Re: Dometic fridge wiring question (diagram supplied)
Comments: To: Richard A Jones <jones@COLORADO.EDU>
In-Reply-To:  <461EFC3B.9020408@colorado.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed

Richard, my involvement started because he had an early Westy wiring
that is not covered in the later Bentleys and because he was dealing
with wiring mods done by a PO.

While my general preference is to advise people to leave electrical
things stock, sometimes there are good reasons not to. In this case he
has early Westy wiring. To keep the fridge 12 volts on the main battery
also means keeping the kitchen on the main battery. That means the led
panel and battery charge level leds are on the main battery. Ideally the
leds should show the status of the aux battery if there is one being used.

Certainly he could split up the Westy kitchen wiring to run the fridge
12 volt on the main bat and the kitchen on aux but I advise against that
  for KISS reasons as well as it won't meet his stated goal of being
able to safely run the fridge on 12 volts for short time without engine
running. With 82 and later Westys it is simple to split things up at the
Westy double fuse panel and relay but he has an 81.

Mark


Richard A Jones wrote:

> Mark & Neil:
>
> What am I missing in this discussion about hooking
> the fridge relay to the aux battery?  It seems to me
> there are two options:
> (A) keep the fridge relay.  Then why move it to the
>     aux battery since it only works when the alt is
>     charging?  Don't mess with the fridge wiring at all.
> (B) remove the relay--and wire the fridge to the aux
>     battery so you can run the fridge on 12V whenever
>     you want.  In that case, an external indicator light
>     added to the kitchen panel would be good, since the
>     7 amp heater in the fridge could run your aux battery
>     down overnight.
> But why try to figure out how to move the relay to the
> aux battery?  Admittedly, my thinking is contaminated
> by my purely manual setup that I inherited (well, really,
> purchased) of no relay and a battery switch.  And, yes,
> I have run my aux battery down, but not from the fridge....
>
> Richard
> Boulder
>