Vitrifrigo fridge cutting out

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bongojoe
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Vitrifrigo fridge cutting out

Post by bongojoe » Sun Sep 02, 2018 8:04 pm

I just returned from a weekend adventure, and was quite surprised to find my Vitrifrigo fridge wasn't cold when I was unpacking the van—it had obviously been off for a few hours. I hadn't noticed any issues the rest of the weekend, it seems to have been working perfectly.

I switched it off on my control panel then switched it back on and I could hear the compressor start up again and the fridge began cooling down.

I know the compressors on these things have a low-power cut out but I'd be surprised if that had triggered as I was only camping two nights with a 120ah LB and didn't see the voltage drop below 12 at any point, and I have a solar panel (although it was very overcast most of the weekend). Even if that had happened, I assume it would have started up again on the journey home (a two hour drive) as the LB got a charge from the alternator.

If the low power cut-out triggers, will these fridges always start up again when there's sufficient voltage or do they stay switched off?

If it's not that, any suggestions what else could have caused this?
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g8dhe
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Re: Vitrifrigo fridge cutting out

Post by g8dhe » Sun Sep 02, 2018 9:14 pm

Yes the fridges will actually keep trying to restart, you will hear the fan come on followed by an attempt to restart the compressor only for the voltage to fall and the cut-out come back in.

I've been trying to track down an intermittent drop in voltage on my system for a while now and believe I may have located it in the form of the the three-way toggle switch for selecting SB-Off-LB on the control panel, this handles the full current both charging from solar/EHU or load from everything on the control panel, I suspect that the switch is only rated at about 10 Amps and I can easily draw a lot more than that as loads at times so looking for a replacement which will fit the panel cut-out but rated much higher may be 30 Amps if I can find one!
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