Edgestar Fridge Modifications Thread
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lockedwheels
Adventurer
Here is my $12 solution to having lights in the fridge. 50 lumen 40 hours. Has to be off centered because the baskets.
Sent from my SM-G930T using Tapatalk
Sent from my SM-G930T using Tapatalk
guidolyons
Addicted to Gear Oil
Saw this light for truck toolboxes at my local Tractor Supply Co. LEDs, 3AAA batteries, and a motion switch. Would make a good light for a cooler.
Whynter Mounting
I have a new Whynter and would like to mount it in it's tray underneath using threaded inserts thru the bottom metal. Does anyone know what's above the bottom of these refers? Is there some space before it hits insulation? Does it have a cold plate in the bottom (or just on the sides)? I know one poster attached a quick-release clip in mount for another brand. Have any of the rest of you been "down under"?
I have a new Whynter and would like to mount it in it's tray underneath using threaded inserts thru the bottom metal. Does anyone know what's above the bottom of these refers? Is there some space before it hits insulation? Does it have a cold plate in the bottom (or just on the sides)? I know one poster attached a quick-release clip in mount for another brand. Have any of the rest of you been "down under"?
theksmith
Explorer
i was able to easily make my old Edgestar work with the Engle Transit Slide Lock, the Whynter is probably similarly constructed on the bottom: https://offroadpassport.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1384
REWIRING POWER CORD
I opened the end panel, took out the DC receptacle, and cut the 2 wires about 2" from the receptacle. Their colors of brown and blue are not NEC standard (or any other code I know of). So, confused I was which was hot. The name of the female of this type connection is IEC 320 C7. The male socket on the refer is C8. These cords were invented and given their official nomenclature for 120VAC use in small appliances and electronics. The mfgrs of 12VDC just adopted them. Bad decision, IMO, because DC requires much more current (amperage) over equal distance to produce the same wattage (electricity to do work needed by load user). This requires larger gauge wire to guarantee the correct ampacity to prevent wire overheating and ultimately load shorting.
Our mfgr of Edge Star and Whynter (mine) suffered the same design frailty. The copper showing the power wires I cut looks like 16 AWG; but in the small gauges, eye sight is not good enough. The internet told me cables like mine are usually even smaller 18 AWG. Well, 16 AWG is really too small, even for 120VAC which normally wants 14 AWG. It's certainly not good enough for DC.
Having said that, let me explain. The ability of wire to carry current is called ampacity. The NEC has charts for the various sizes in standard and metric. The numbers I used above are standard. Designers and installers are supposed to be very liberal; and, in spite of what the charts say, the wire actually used is to be larger. In our case, 16 AWG has ampacity of 20A in open air runs using ordinary 70 deg C rated wire. 18 AWG is 12A. The refers we have use less amps (current) than that, less than 5A, as a matter of fact. So, what's the issue?
When the refer's Dandoss compressor has to run long periods of time, has to cut on and off too often, or spends its day in a hot, hot environ, the parts get hot. This is the normal reaction of electricity forcing its way through places experiencing friction. The resulting heat, which accumulates, is bad for the wire and components. If it gets too hot, designers place a cut-off. In our case, these refers have a 20A glass fuse in the plug. This is far from ideal. Protection is for the wires, not the appliance, and is supposed to be as close to the source (battery) as possible. Our refer designers didnt trust the 12VDC systems in our vehicles; so, in case the vehicle's fuses don't blow, they put a "last resort" in the plug. So, again, what's the issue?
With the size wires our mfgr is using, there is little room for absorption of heat caused by hard work. Their wiring works, but in my opinion, just barely. Like other posters in this thread, therefore, I'm installing larger gauge wire and upgrading the plug and receptacle.
Back to the non-standard color of the Pos and Neg wires behind the panel. I found lots of confusing articles on the internet regarding whether the "square" side of the receptacle was hot or not. Most spoke in terms of "neutral" referring to its most common use in the 120VAC world. So, I resorted to looking at the obvious for the answer: the mfgr-supplied DC cord. They DID use standard NEC colors of red for Pos and black for Neg. Their red wire clearly goes to to the square side of the plug. This allowed to see which color that red/square side plugged in to on the refer. The answer for my 2016 Whynter was brown. I have assumed the other wire, the blue one, is negative.
This has been discussed in previous posts; but I don't think we heard back from the questioning poster whether he wired it right.
The second part of this long post regards whether to upgrade the wire at all and, if so, to what? The question arises from the problem created by not being able (or in my case, willing) to remove the refer's power distribution box. You see, in the newer units, the power wires, AC and DC, come out in bundled pairs from this box. (It's easy to tell which is which) An upgraded in ampacity receptacle can be installed on the wires' ends; but that does NOTHING to increase the wire size going back into the box. You end up with bringing electricity in a co,fortable wire size to the receptacle, only to watch it be bottlenecked down before being used to run the refer.
I decided that's just the way life is, sometimes, and used a larger wire to get power to the receptacle, anyway. I decided the bottleneck of small wires is only 4" long and hope that's too short a distance to allow much heat build up. Your decision,in this regard, may be the opposite.
I decided to use 10 AWG because I really wanted no heat issues in that wire. Several have experienced that, resulting in poor cooling performance. The ampacity of 10 AWG in open air using 90 deg C HIGH TEMP wire is 50A. I really believe 12 AWG 70 deg C wire is really sufficient here; but over such a short distance, over-sizing wire a little can't hurt. I upgraded the ends to Anderson Powerpoles from Powerwerx. I bought a receptacle housing that snaps into a thin-walled panel and put my Powerpole red and black end in it. I could have used 30A rated prongs; but I went with 45A. The red and black prong housings are all the same size 45A and below. Only the prongs get bigger. Powerpole 45A prongs will accept my 10 AWG fine. Inside my vehicle at the "Electrical Center" where the Auxillary Battery supplies the refer and other DC things, I put a Powerpole 45A receptacle on the board. This will let me take my refer and its DC cord somewhere else.
Your varying or disagreeing opinions about my posts' contents are welcome and appreciated. I posted no pix because the inside of my panel is on another post above. The Powerpoles use is self explanatory to anyone who wants to obatain and learn about the; and pictires here will not help that.
I opened the end panel, took out the DC receptacle, and cut the 2 wires about 2" from the receptacle. Their colors of brown and blue are not NEC standard (or any other code I know of). So, confused I was which was hot. The name of the female of this type connection is IEC 320 C7. The male socket on the refer is C8. These cords were invented and given their official nomenclature for 120VAC use in small appliances and electronics. The mfgrs of 12VDC just adopted them. Bad decision, IMO, because DC requires much more current (amperage) over equal distance to produce the same wattage (electricity to do work needed by load user). This requires larger gauge wire to guarantee the correct ampacity to prevent wire overheating and ultimately load shorting.
Our mfgr of Edge Star and Whynter (mine) suffered the same design frailty. The copper showing the power wires I cut looks like 16 AWG; but in the small gauges, eye sight is not good enough. The internet told me cables like mine are usually even smaller 18 AWG. Well, 16 AWG is really too small, even for 120VAC which normally wants 14 AWG. It's certainly not good enough for DC.
Having said that, let me explain. The ability of wire to carry current is called ampacity. The NEC has charts for the various sizes in standard and metric. The numbers I used above are standard. Designers and installers are supposed to be very liberal; and, in spite of what the charts say, the wire actually used is to be larger. In our case, 16 AWG has ampacity of 20A in open air runs using ordinary 70 deg C rated wire. 18 AWG is 12A. The refers we have use less amps (current) than that, less than 5A, as a matter of fact. So, what's the issue?
When the refer's Dandoss compressor has to run long periods of time, has to cut on and off too often, or spends its day in a hot, hot environ, the parts get hot. This is the normal reaction of electricity forcing its way through places experiencing friction. The resulting heat, which accumulates, is bad for the wire and components. If it gets too hot, designers place a cut-off. In our case, these refers have a 20A glass fuse in the plug. This is far from ideal. Protection is for the wires, not the appliance, and is supposed to be as close to the source (battery) as possible. Our refer designers didnt trust the 12VDC systems in our vehicles; so, in case the vehicle's fuses don't blow, they put a "last resort" in the plug. So, again, what's the issue?
With the size wires our mfgr is using, there is little room for absorption of heat caused by hard work. Their wiring works, but in my opinion, just barely. Like other posters in this thread, therefore, I'm installing larger gauge wire and upgrading the plug and receptacle.
Back to the non-standard color of the Pos and Neg wires behind the panel. I found lots of confusing articles on the internet regarding whether the "square" side of the receptacle was hot or not. Most spoke in terms of "neutral" referring to its most common use in the 120VAC world. So, I resorted to looking at the obvious for the answer: the mfgr-supplied DC cord. They DID use standard NEC colors of red for Pos and black for Neg. Their red wire clearly goes to to the square side of the plug. This allowed to see which color that red/square side plugged in to on the refer. The answer for my 2016 Whynter was brown. I have assumed the other wire, the blue one, is negative.
This has been discussed in previous posts; but I don't think we heard back from the questioning poster whether he wired it right.
The second part of this long post regards whether to upgrade the wire at all and, if so, to what? The question arises from the problem created by not being able (or in my case, willing) to remove the refer's power distribution box. You see, in the newer units, the power wires, AC and DC, come out in bundled pairs from this box. (It's easy to tell which is which) An upgraded in ampacity receptacle can be installed on the wires' ends; but that does NOTHING to increase the wire size going back into the box. You end up with bringing electricity in a co,fortable wire size to the receptacle, only to watch it be bottlenecked down before being used to run the refer.
I decided that's just the way life is, sometimes, and used a larger wire to get power to the receptacle, anyway. I decided the bottleneck of small wires is only 4" long and hope that's too short a distance to allow much heat build up. Your decision,in this regard, may be the opposite.
I decided to use 10 AWG because I really wanted no heat issues in that wire. Several have experienced that, resulting in poor cooling performance. The ampacity of 10 AWG in open air using 90 deg C HIGH TEMP wire is 50A. I really believe 12 AWG 70 deg C wire is really sufficient here; but over such a short distance, over-sizing wire a little can't hurt. I upgraded the ends to Anderson Powerpoles from Powerwerx. I bought a receptacle housing that snaps into a thin-walled panel and put my Powerpole red and black end in it. I could have used 30A rated prongs; but I went with 45A. The red and black prong housings are all the same size 45A and below. Only the prongs get bigger. Powerpole 45A prongs will accept my 10 AWG fine. Inside my vehicle at the "Electrical Center" where the Auxillary Battery supplies the refer and other DC things, I put a Powerpole 45A receptacle on the board. This will let me take my refer and its DC cord somewhere else.
Your varying or disagreeing opinions about my posts' contents are welcome and appreciated. I posted no pix because the inside of my panel is on another post above. The Powerpoles use is self explanatory to anyone who wants to obatain and learn about the; and pictires here will not help that.
Last edited:
slomatt
Adventurer
Warning.... possibly boring electrical calculations ahead.
All wires have some level of internal resistance which increases linearly with the length of the wire. In other words a 20' length will have twice the resistance of a 10' length. This resistance causes a voltage drop that increases as the current goes up. It can be calculated using ohm's law V=IR (voltage = current x resistance).
For example 12 AWG wire is 1.588 ohms per 1000' feet, so the voltage drop on a 10' length at 20A is V=IR=20A*1.588ohm*10'/1000'=0.32V.
16 AWG wire is 4.016 ohms per 1000' feet, which assuming the same 10' length and 20A load is a voltage drop of 0.8V, which is much more significant.
This resistance also results in some of the electrical energy being dissipated as heat, which can be calculated using P=VI. Using the above two examples the 12 AWG wire would be dissipating 20A * 0.32V = 6.4W and the 16 AWG 16W. Maximum heat capacity is determined by the insulation rating of the wire and if it is installed in free air or in a bundle.
The tricky part is that the fridge does not draw a constant load, it spikes when the compressor starts up and then is lower after that. If the fuse is 20A then it is fairly safe to assume that the fridge will not constantly draw more than that under normal use.
BUT.... this is where voltage drop comes into play. If you have a lot of voltage drop then the fridge is going to require more current (P=VI again), and this can put you above the rating of the fuse causing it to blow. I used to run my Edgestar on the factory wiring of my truck, and I blew a couple of fuses due to voltage drop. In addition the fridge would hit the battery save mode often due to the low voltage under load.
The factory 12v wire is actually a reasonable size, assuming it is not connected to a cigarette lighter fed by a small diameter wire. Going to a 12 AWG power cord should be more than large enough (assuming the wire length is not more than 10-15'), but again it needs to be plugged into a suitable power source. Having a few inches of a smaller diameter wire inside the fridge is no big deal since the resistance is low for a short run like that.
Oh, and when in doubt about positive and negative in DC circuits the best bet is to hook up a multi-meter and test it out.
- Matt
All wires have some level of internal resistance which increases linearly with the length of the wire. In other words a 20' length will have twice the resistance of a 10' length. This resistance causes a voltage drop that increases as the current goes up. It can be calculated using ohm's law V=IR (voltage = current x resistance).
For example 12 AWG wire is 1.588 ohms per 1000' feet, so the voltage drop on a 10' length at 20A is V=IR=20A*1.588ohm*10'/1000'=0.32V.
16 AWG wire is 4.016 ohms per 1000' feet, which assuming the same 10' length and 20A load is a voltage drop of 0.8V, which is much more significant.
This resistance also results in some of the electrical energy being dissipated as heat, which can be calculated using P=VI. Using the above two examples the 12 AWG wire would be dissipating 20A * 0.32V = 6.4W and the 16 AWG 16W. Maximum heat capacity is determined by the insulation rating of the wire and if it is installed in free air or in a bundle.
The tricky part is that the fridge does not draw a constant load, it spikes when the compressor starts up and then is lower after that. If the fuse is 20A then it is fairly safe to assume that the fridge will not constantly draw more than that under normal use.
BUT.... this is where voltage drop comes into play. If you have a lot of voltage drop then the fridge is going to require more current (P=VI again), and this can put you above the rating of the fuse causing it to blow. I used to run my Edgestar on the factory wiring of my truck, and I blew a couple of fuses due to voltage drop. In addition the fridge would hit the battery save mode often due to the low voltage under load.
The factory 12v wire is actually a reasonable size, assuming it is not connected to a cigarette lighter fed by a small diameter wire. Going to a 12 AWG power cord should be more than large enough (assuming the wire length is not more than 10-15'), but again it needs to be plugged into a suitable power source. Having a few inches of a smaller diameter wire inside the fridge is no big deal since the resistance is low for a short run like that.
Oh, and when in doubt about positive and negative in DC circuits the best bet is to hook up a multi-meter and test it out.
- Matt
Happy Joe
Apprentice Geezer
??? People actually calculate wire size for small loads like this?
...for random small loads/accessories; I just use fine stranded, oil resistant 12 gauge appliance wire.
It doesn't have to be optimum just more than big enough.
...don't sweat the little things...
Enjoy!
...for random small loads/accessories; I just use fine stranded, oil resistant 12 gauge appliance wire.
It doesn't have to be optimum just more than big enough.
...don't sweat the little things...
Enjoy!
theksmith
Explorer
looks like they changed the URL: http://ambientstores.com/whynter-fm-metal-freezer-hinge-part/
edit - nevermind they are sold out i guess too
edit - nevermind they are sold out i guess too
