Australian Retro Rambler

[edgeau]

Next milestone complete! I have the hatch lining in and lights wired. Yup might notice in the picture a pair of wire snippers and a screwdriver stuck randomly on the liner. This is thanks to rare Earth magnets scavenged from old computer hard drives. I attached 18 of them to the inside of the ply to create a magic knife block. They are powerful enough to work through 4mm ply quite nicely.

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[edgeau]

I have been busy with other projects around the house like some major landscaping. I have had some opportunity to do a few small things. A spot for paper towels and a french cleat ready for side table attachment.

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[edgeau]

I knocked together a prototype side table with adjustable leg from some packing crate scrap and the remains of an old aluminum slat table. I am so pleased with the result I am wondering if I should just sand and varnish this, skip buying "nice" wood.

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[edgeau]

I did skip the nice wood for this but I did buy some for the other side.

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[edgeau]

Major modification time. My poor old gas fridge died on the most recent trip. It is not supposed to have two flames! The whole galley was designed around accommodating the fridge and Webber Q BBQ

As you can see it is pretty much a cube shape

Well they don't make these any more and I would like a 12v Compressor fridge anyway so I can run it while towing. The trouble is
1. they are all a very different shape so physically fitting it will be interesting.
2. My electrical system was designed for a few LED lights, a fan and charging phones etc. Even though I oversized it for that it probably won't handle a fridge. So probably bigger battery, more solar watts and a new charge controller needed.



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[edgeau]

I will start with number 2 here as I am running an experiment to get data on redesigning the electrics.
I have purchased the new fridge based on it's dimensions. More on that later. The specs say it draws 3.75A when running the compressor buy how much does it need to run? I want to know how many Ah it will consume.
I am starting by running on AC house power to get it down to temp as that is what we do before each trip anyway. I have also loaded it with 6 milk bottles full of water to simulate the thermal load of food.

It took an hour to go from 17deg C to 3 deg. So that is pretty impressive. Mind you we usually camp in over 30deg ambient temperature.

Next is to hook it up to a neat power meter I picked up at Jaycar that as well as real time info shows Ah used since started.

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[MickinOz]

Hey edge. Now the fun starts, What brand of fridge did you end up with?

 

[edgeau]

The Brass Monkey

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[edgeau]

While the experiment goes it is time to look at options to physically fit the fridge. This is a lesson in not trusting the manufacturer's specifications!

I have exactly 480mm between the floor and the underside of the bench. The specs on the web (and in the manual) have the height at 475mm. Hmm tight but doable. I would have to ditch the plywood drawer and use 3mm metal leaving 1mm clearance top and bottom. You don't get much finer than that!

When I get it home and unbox I find it won't fit! The other half helpfully suggests that the wheels must be the issues. As I am looking at the setup and trying to figure out how to take them off the axel I find the whole axel just clips in and out.

Cool, It now slides in but one side touches the bench. The lid has a strange wedge shape moulded in to it.

I need another 5mm! I thought about shaving the wedge off but there are 2 issues with that. It is probably just foam under a plastic shell and I would mess with the warranty.


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[edgeau]

The next option considered was to remove some thickness off the underside of the bench. Too dangerous to use a router upside down in a confined space and I worry about reducing the strength of the bench. So a slide out is not going to happen or will it....?

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[edgeau]

The current plan is to move the sliders to the edges of the under floor area where you can see the feet of tarp poles in this photo.

I will still do a 3mm metal shelf. But at the top of the sliders not the bottom. The poles will still slide in. I will just have to haul the fridge out and drop it 20mm onto the shelf when setting up. Not as nice as sitting on a slide out shelf all the time but more convenient than using a set of fold up legs.

The divider between the BBQ and fridge will have to move and be a little slimmer but that is easy, it is secured with screws in some angle.

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[edgeau]

Power use experiment update.
So I started by measuring the re charge of the battery from our last night camping. 8AH. The battery is rated at 40Ah but at 50% depth of discharge that is 20AH useable. So 12 available.

Stage 2.
Rig up anderson plugs on the power pack so I can measure the fridge use.

This has the added advantage that if I decide to take advantage of a powered site I can plug the power pack in to the solar panel input on the drop and run without modification.

Overnight result was 4.5AH over 8.5 hours.

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[edgeau]

I also left it on during the day.

11.5 AH over almost 23hours

It is starting to look like my habit of overdoing things might pay off. It is possible I may be able to get away with out upgrading everything.

To that end the next stage of the experiment is to repeat with the fridge changed to eco mode.

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[edgeau]

2.6AH this morning after 9.5hours. eco mode seems to work.

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[edgeau]

Oops this last run will need to be redone. Mrs Edge had the day off planning young ones birthday and loaded the fridge with warm drinks for the party. At least that gives me a working hard figure of 14Ah on ECO mode.
It is starting to look borderline. Definitely only one day on the battery and no reserve if there is an issue charging.

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[noseoil]

We use a 100 watt solar panel on the roof (designed it for the "hard points" during the build, fortunately) for ours & we have plenty of power for our needs. The battery is a 100 AH deep cycle, so there's never been an issue with lights, radio or movies at night. 50% capacity is a fair load to pull on a battery every day, so having a good charge is important to keep things moving properly.

I know it's wrong & over-simplified (I'm no electrical engineer & never played one on TV), but my rule of thumb for solar is to have 1 watt of charge for each amp-hour of storage capacity for a system. A 40 watt panel would take care of your energy needs every day & even on a cloudy day it should work well enough. Too many cloudy days might be a problem, but if you have "mostly" sunny weather it should be fine.

 

[edgeau]

I have been a little quiet. Rush to the end of the year with work. But I have finished the fridge housing and using position. It turned out rather different to the plan because when I went to attach the sliders I realized they would interfere with my lifting mechanism to remove the TD from the trailer. I use that functionality a lot so I had to adapt to a fold down shelf. The supports are aluminum slats from a long dead camping table. As they slide out completely I can remove them for a lift. [emoji3]

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[MickinOz]

I was looking at a few things the other day and I wondered how often you actually use the removability feature.
I confess I thought you'd get sick of it and just buy another trailer, so its nice to see the work you put into making it removable wasn't in vain.
I had another look at the brass monkey fridges at the shop today. The 22L looks like it will slot into the space occupied by my Engel. I have a small bonus coming from work. Its tempting.

 

[edgeau]

Another trailer would be convenient but it is a matter of parking space. It only takes me 10 to 15 minutes to convert it to a box trailer using the cordless impact driver and drill so a good compromise.

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[bdosborn-SMB]

I' d keep track of the temperature when you run your tests. Usage goes up a lot for my fridge when its hot outside.
Bruce