Ok, I'll admit I abused, ignored, scorned and ridiculed this poor little spare fridge I'd picked up with the plan of possibly using it one day. Left outside last summer, it sat there on a cement block as the winter began. Rained on. Snowed on. Pretty sure at least one bird crapped on it. I walked by it yesterday and thought I may as well do a quick cleanup of it and maybe just sell it for parts. So I dragged it into my shop and put it up on the workbench. That blackish wet mess inside it on the bottom in the first photo was actually solid ice when I brought it in early in the morning.
But I have a problem. It's a problem I believe many of you share. I get emotionally attached to inanimate objects: VW buses. VW bugs. VW fastbacks. And.....apparently Westfalia fridges. I've been very lucky with getting the last two running that I've worked on but this poor excuse for a fridge was a mess (although that was my fault if I was being candid).
I cleaned it up and my attachment to this little fridge began. They are pretty cute. So after checking the wiring and most of the parts and cleaned out an amazing array of leaves, seedpods, webs, dirt, dead spiders, and at least a few things that were completely indistinguishable, I set the controls and plugged it into my bench outlet. No smoke, no bang! What I did hear after a while was an almost bubbling/sizzling as the glass wool insulation in the heater "tube" was (surprise!) quite soaking wet from being in the outdoor elements. It eventually dried out and quieted down and yep within an hour the metal fin area inside the fridge was plenty cold and soon was covered in frost. Since I had no door, that led to the invention of a cardboard door just for fun so I could get my retro bottle of Fanta Orange cold before I drank it later.
When I was done with the 110AC testing, I let the fridge return to regular room temperature. Next I hooked it up to a fairly large deep cycle battery I had wintering on trickle charge beside the workbench for the winter and switched it to 12v DC. My little alligator clip wires were not up to the current requirements and got hot quickly so I switched over to using much heavier wire cables. Seems to pull between 7 and 8 amps. But the fins inside the fridge got pretty cold within half an hour and then light frost within 60 minutes. While a battery drain for sure, it certainly works (and would work great while bus running and alternator spinning.
The one thing that did not work was the little 12v fan down below the back that is meant to blow cooling air over the fins to keep it from overheating. The thermal control device (thermistor?) gets warm enough on the top fins, it connects the circuit for that fan to get +12 on the yellow wire to the fan motor: for sure that is working fine. The fan motor is pretty much dead. I'm going to look for a replacement but others have written that using a very small 12v cooling fan for computers will work just fine too. I may try that.
But meanwhile I have a functioning fridge on at least the 110vac and 12vdc so I'm pretty happy. My bus has no propane system anymore anyway.