Lower budget fridge? Iceco?

[direwolf82]

An Indel B TB31A, TB41A or TB51A is 13 3/4 inches wide. My TB31A sucks air in the left side vent and blows it out the right. My propane tank is right up against the right vent and I haven't had any problems with it. It's been reliable for probably 10 years but a ground wire did vibrate loose internally at one point.

Huh, indel? Haven't seen that brand yet. Italian company I gather, what does that mean for parts and service do you know?
It would fit pretty nicely and the DC only version is cheaper, both good points.
That's a pretty good record, one bad trace in 10 years. I'll be looking into them as the time gets closer to pull the trigger. Trying to find a sale or wait for black Friday and see what happens.

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[direwolf82]

I picked up a VL45Pro S and it has been great in every way. Added an Bluetooth thermometer and now I even have phone based alerts.

Supposedly, "VANORDIE" is good for 20% off certain models.

Nice, how long have you had it and how much use do you get out of it?
You run a house battery for it or run it off the start battery?

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[john61ct]

Indel-B makes Evakool, Truckfridge, Isotherm, Vitrifrigo, Tundra, OEM for Peterbilt & Kenworth

Use Secop (was Danfoss) compressors

got bought by Webasto in recent years

good rep

 

[john61ct]

You run a house battery for it or run it off the start battery?

No fridge will run off grid from the Starter batt unless you are driving all day. A 100Ah House would IMO be marginal in lead, double that better,

fed by 200+W solar panelage

 

[direwolf82]

Indel-B makes Evakool, Truckfridge, Isotherm, Vitrifrigo, Tundra, OEM for Peterbilt & Kenworth

Use Secop (was Danfoss) compressors

got bought by Webasto in recent years

good rep

Nice. I'll look into them more since it sounds like stateside support should be around.

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[vtsoundman]

Sweet, some confidence restored. After digging around some more it seems like most people are very happy with theirs. The customer service also sounds pretty hit or miss, more hits on minor issues though.
Since it's the only one I've found that can fit I'll probably get one and hope for the best.
I do hope some more people that have them weigh in with their experiences.

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I find that sensibly priced purchases (like an Iceco) vs name/lifestyle brand/exorbitantly priced items get less air time. The off brands will often sell double the volume and be just fine. There are no influencers, no paid youtube videos, and no bragging rights with 'it works just fine gear'

The price of my Dometic CFX65DZ shot up 4-500 to over $1k in a less than year (mine is the blue/grey color scheme) - it is all because the overland demand shot through the roof. It corresponded with their massive marketing shift into the Expo space...so you do the math.

The Dometic has the same issues with it's display as my IceCo and the Azuvendurisbdkaheudh (whatever brand that is). My buddy's brand new ARB has similar inaccuracies...the newer fridges do have cool monitoring apps, but I can pickup a really solid BT logging temp disc for under $30 on Amazon.

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[john61ct]

Azuvendurisbdkaheudh (whatever brand that is)

Link?

or at least proper spelling?

 

[direwolf82]

No fridge will run off grid from the Starter batt unless you are driving all day. A 100Ah House would IMO be marginal in lead, double that better,

fed by 200+W solar panelage

I dunno, my big truck had an 8d deep cycle that would run it for a while.
But I hear what your saying, as far as fishing trips go it would be a fair amount of driving from one place to another throughout the day and that will keep my house battery topped off. I don't have solar yet, just barely have a house battery at the moment. I'm pretty much just turning to look at the electrical system now and figure out what I want to do long term. The plan so far is get the fridge which I can use as the truck is set up now, get whatever camp lights, inverter for cordless tool charging and stuff like that I want and then figure out the battery and charging setup to accommodate for the load plus 25 percent.
Does the solar panel keep up with the fridge and what kind of climate are you in?

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[john61ct]

Even 100W is fine in good insolation conditions.

But always do sizing for worst case scenario, in PNW winter might need 300W tbh.

The Ah bank capacity is your buffer, I would not go for less than 3 days.

Stick to DC power as much as possible, even doing voltage conversion better than DC-AC-DC inverters waste a lot of energy.

Tool batteries have 12V chargers.

Screen gadgets, USB etc is DC native.

Avoid load devices designed for grid power AMAP.

 

[direwolf82]

I find that sensibly priced purchases (like an Iceco) vs name/lifestyle brand/exorbitantly priced items get less air time. The off brands will often sell double the volume and be just fine. There are no influencers, no paid youtube videos, and no bragging rights with 'it works just fine gear'

The price of my Dometic CFX65DZ shot up 4-500 to over $1k in a less than year (mine is the blue/grey color scheme) - it is all because the overland demand shot through the roof. It corresponded with their massive marketing shift into the Expo space...so you do the math.

The Dometic has the same issues with it's display as my IceCo and the Azuvendurisbdkaheudh (whatever brand that is). My buddy's brand new ARB has similar inaccuracies...the newer fridges do have cool monitoring apps, but I can pickup a really solid BT logging temp disc for under $30 on Amazon.

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I agree about branding, although big names usually have better support networks and a lot of times it is buy one cry once. Like there are some really good tools at HF, but I'm not getting everything there.
I don't need a recognized name, I just need something that will work and I can get parts or service for. It seems that iceco is pretty popular, they generally work fine and are priced well. Some stories of good customer service and stories of not so good
I'm not worried about having a blue tooth connection to it, I don't want to deal with my phone in the woods and I can check it physically pretty easily.


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[direwolf82]

Even 100W is fine in good insolation conditions.

But always do sizing for worst case scenario, in PNW winter might need 300W tbh.

The Ah bank capacity is your buffer, I would not go for less than 3 days.

Stick to DC power as much as possible, even doing voltage conversion better than DC-AC-DC inverters waste a lot of energy.

Tool batteries have 12V chargers.

Screen gadgets, USB etc is DC native.

Avoid load devices designed for grid power AMAP.

Yeah, new England isn't renowned for sunshine all the time and that's where I'll be pretty soon.
My power usage will be limited as I don't do electrical gadgets, it'll be fridge, lights and charging tools 99 percent of the time. I already have an inverter and extra chargers from work so I'm trying to use that instead of buying new stuff, especially if I end up with a redarc dc/DC charger, they have 120 outlets I think and I won't have bought anything now that ended up being redundant later. And come to think of it maybe the inverter built into the Toyota will charge my cordless tool batteries already? Hhmmm, don't know how I didn't think of that before. That's a palm to forehead moment.
I don't do much sitting in one spot for days on end, prefer to stay mobile so reliance on batteries is less important to me. I figure 2 days worth should serve me with an abundant cushion for my style of camping and fishing.
I'm trying to buy a house in the middle of all this so money is more important now than usual.

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[cptmishu1984]

I have an iceco 45L fridge. No complaints.
the three things that i do that really help are:
1) bring it down to temp in my house using ac power wnd then stuff it with food that has already been chilled in my home fridge
2) avoid opening it as much as possible
3) when driving i connect it to my cars 12v outlet and also use rhat time to charge batteries

 

[direwolf82]

I have an iceco 45L fridge. No complaints.
the three things that i do that really help are:
1) bring it down to temp in my house using ac power wnd then stuff it with food that has already been chilled in my home fridge
2) avoid opening it as much as possible
3) when driving i connect it to my cars 12v outlet and also use rhat time to charge batteries

I grew up around boats and really anal retentive father so it's drilled in pretty deep that 12v fridges get opened for no more than 30 seconds at a time.
I will be taking your advice of pre chilling the unit and food before trips, that has to save a bunch of power.

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[roving1]

That is a good sign. Anything that can survive some exposure to the elements and keep going can't be too cheap and crappy. Do you keep stuff in it or is it empty while sitting? Dumb question maybe?
True and good point, forming ice can't really lie about the temp.
What model fridge do you have?
Seems like the vl(?, green ones with the big nice metal latches I think) series is more popular and if I had the room I'd be looking at them for both size and style points but not in the cards for me. Either way it seems like they all use Danfoss. I would love to see one in person before I got it but it doesn't seem like iceco is available in any stores.
I talked to my dad yesterday and he might be giving me his fridge compressor and stuff from the boat that doesn't work anymore. It's throwing an over heat error code as soon as you turn it in, bad temp probe in the compressor I'm thinking. If I can get that working I'll be making my own built in fridge, sigh, did not want to have to deal with foam, fiberglass and epoxy or polyester for this one, but it gives me an excuse to get a tig torch and make an aluminum or stainless shell for the thing if I end up going that route. Or just mate the thing to a cooler I already have?

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VL-45. Keeping beer and using it as an overflow fridge to the house and testing battery and solar. So its been running about 80% of the last 3 months 24/7 at 34 degrees. Occasionally I turn it off when I have the vehicle in the garage to work on it and it isn't getting solar.

 

[direwolf82]

VL-45. Keeping beer and using it as an overflow fridge to the house and testing battery and solar. So its been running about 80% of the last 3 months 24/7 at 34 degrees. Occasionally I turn it off when I have the vehicle in the garage to work on it and it isn't getting solar.

Nice, I am liking the positive feedback. If I can't get the freebie working pretty sure iceco is the way forward for me at this point. Although as I sit here and dream big a built in custom fridge would be pretty sweet and I haven't seen a custom fridge in anyone's setup yet.

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