Truck fridge

[JimT]

Well, guess I should update my experience too.

The Dometic fridge (see earlier posts) I had was great for over 2 years... except sometimes it would read the wrong internal temp. Set for 32F sometimes after being jarred it would get stuck on that temp or read -12 or 20 or something random. Wasn't just the display as the compressor would react to whatever the reading was. There were a few times that I parked to find it reading 12F and after a tap in the right place it would jump up to 45F or more. The final straw was after a weekend parked at home. Went inside on Friday with it working normally, came out Monday morning and the display said 30F... gave it a tap and it changed to 54F. Truck hadn't moved.

The Dometic and many others (including some ARB, Alpicool and ICECO) are all very similar to each other to the point that it's probably some base design licenced out to various companies who tweak it for their own branding.

So, because of that one and only issue and a desire to go slightly bigger, I went back to Amazon and settled on this Alpicool unit. This one has an LG compressor (previous units had the Danfoss) which in operation is slightly louder then the Danfoss, but also seems to run smoother. In practice it's not loud enough to bother me as I sleep with my head about 1 foot away from the compressor.

Compared to the Dometic this Alpicool unit is less thermally efficient. Side-by-side comparison reveals slightly thinner walls meaning less internal insulation. Also the rubber strip along the lid seems too thin and probably doesn't seal as well as the Dometic. I plan to pick up some thin weather stripping and add it to the top where the lid sits. I'm also thinking about building a box of foam insulation around the unit. Since it's bigger it's less convenient to move in and out of the truck, even empty, so I'm planning to build a permanent base. Right now I have a big bungee cord through the handles holding it down and it's working great.

As for cooling, I left it at the factory setting of 32F and it seems to work fine. It will actively run the compressor until the temp drops to around 28F then wait until about 34F to start the cooling cycle again. Internally the food is kept cold but never actually freezes at this setting.

I've only had this unit for about 2 months with only about 1 month of active usage. This one supposedly works with bluetooth and an app to display stats and allow remote control from the app, but I haven't tried it as it's some Chinese app and there's been too many problem apps found on the Play store recently. Plus I just haven't seen a need for it.

So far I'm happy with it's performance. I'm thinking about taking the Dometic apart to search for the problem now that I have another unit.