Been downstairs beginning the assembly of my false floor for Skippy and built a nice shiny new 3 shelf thingy to store my 3 fridges on. I sorta have 3 fridges by accident. I have a 40l Engel that I purchased in 1990, a 38L Engel that I purchased in 2014 and a WAECO that cost me $16K and came with a free off road camper.
Thats a different story.
I'm sure we have all had disappointments with professional services and will understand how some things you just suck up and some really stick in your gut. To cut a long story short I paid a local "refrigeration expert" from a local electrical company a small fortune ($540 if I remember correctly) to repair my 1990 Engel back in 2009.
To be honest it was a poor decision
as i was earning a really decent income at the time and could well afford a new car fridge but I was kinda attached to the ol girl. There is a felt pen drawing on the side of it that my stepson did when he was about 15 of a dinosaur and its a bit sentimental.
When it came back from repair I used it a couple of times and it was as good as new but next time I attempted to use it just simply wouldn't work anymore. I did spend a few hours trying to fault find the problem but just gave up and consigned it to the scrap heap. Fast forward to today and Ive pulled the three fridges of the old shelf and tossed them on the floor and rebuilt the shelving.
I decided it was time to toss the 2 non functional fridges and free up some space so I put the newer Engle on the shelf and put the 55l WAECO out to go to the tip and thought "I'll have one more look at this bloody ol Engel."
Rather then plugging in the 12v like I would normally I decided to chuck it on 240 to test the power supply and prove once n for all it was rooted. Imagine my absolute amazment when the bloody thing kicked in and started to cool. I stood there a bit dumbfounded and tried to work out WTF was going on.
It seems that when I had tested it and used it on the several occasions prior to taking it on a trip I had used it on 12v and it worked a treat, I had a big assed 12v Lead Crystal cell from an old mobile phone tower and I used it for garden lighting, running the 12v fridge around the BBQ and for a heap of other things. Sadly it has died and I haven't replaced it yet.
I circuit tested every thing and slowly fault tracked everything back to the 12v Lead. Have two of them but they both worked on the new Engel but neither worked on the 12v socket on the old Engel. I eventuality came to the conclusion that 12v socket was faulty and was about to pull it out when I decided to get a decent light and have a look in the socket itself.
BUGGER ME IF THERE WASNT A 20MM PIECE OF BLACK CABLE INSULATION SITTING IN THE BACK OF THE SOCKET!
Needless to say, I now have 2 working Engels!
One is now 33 years old but had a 11 year rest!
in Trips Old and Planning!