Date: Mon, 4 May 1998 12:06:53 -0700
Reply-To: Mark McCulley <raven@HALCYON.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <Vanagon@vanagon.com>
From: Mark McCulley <raven@HALCYON.COM>
Subject: Re: Aux Battery: Life span of charged battery?
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Yep, 12V refrigerators will deplete a battery pretty quickly. They work fine
when you're driving and your alternator provides the 12V power, but they're
pretty useless when it comes to camping.
It sounds like your aux battery is not wired properly if your fridge is
depleting your starting battery. There should be a relay present that
isloates your aux battery from the primary battery. I don't know that much
about how the Weekender is wired, so I can't give you specifics, but you
should check this out.
-Mark McCulley
At 11:31 AM 5/4/98 -0700, Backus, Brian G wrote:
>I have a refrigerator that came with my Weekender. It bolts to the
>floor and plugs into the cigarette type outlet on the left side of the
>passenger seat next to the floor.
>
>Like the person below me, I am wondering how long it should go before
>draining the battery. It cools my drinks great while I'm on the road
>but it has drained my batteries when left plugged in overnight. I
>thought that is why it came with an extra battery under the drivers seat
>so it could keep the Ref. going.
>after draining my batteries, I thought maybe my batteries were old and
>tired so I replaced them only to have the same problem happen all over
>again... Is this just to make the buyer think they are getting
>something really cool only to find out that it ain't quite that way?
>
>If someone could sort of go through this for me so I can understand what
>I should expect and how and when to operate my system so I can avoid
>having to ask for a jump start in the morning from total strangers. (I
>feel really stupid doing it, I get enough flack from owning a VW).
>Maybe I'm expecting too much. But why do they call it a "Weekender if
>it won't keep your food and drinks cold for the weekend?
>
>> ----------
>> From: Steve Manning[SMTP:smanning@EXECPC.COM]
>> Reply To: Steve Manning
>> Sent: Sunday, May 03, 1998 8:07 PM
>> To: Vanagon@VANAGON.COM
>> Subject: Aux Battery: Life span of charged battery
>>
>> Last fall I installed a deep cycle 32amp/hr wheelchair battery as an
>> auaillary for my '84 westy. I have it wired through the relay under
>> the
>> driver's seat. Everything in the sink/stove/fridge area will run off
>> this
>> aux battery while camping, etc. I understood that if you ran the
>> fridge
>> off the aux, you would get a max of 3hrs out of the battery.So,
>> instead of
>> using the fridge i used an Igloo plug-in cooler which I plugged into
>> an
>> accessory outlet I have wired in off the aux batt. This
>> also killed the battery within 3hrs. Should this have died this
>> quickly? I
>> would think the cooler would draw much less power than the fridge
>> would. I
>> mean, this is the same type of battery that goes into a wheelchair and
>> those can go for a whole day. Both of my batteries charge off the
>> stock
>> alternator with no modifications made except tapping into the existing
>> relay under the driver's seat.
>>
>> I think I'll try to fix the propane on the
>> fridge.
>>
>> -steve-
>>
>
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