Arctic King 2.6 cu ft 1-Door Compact Refrigerator

[MikeRuth]

Good day folks, I'm doing a little experimenting and thought I'd post up here for others to see. 



I was tooling around Walmart yesterday and came across a small compressor fridge that was dirt cheap. 

Here is a link Arctic King 2.6 cu ft 1-Door Compact Refrigerator, Black @ $ 79.00

The door is reversible and it is fairly light weight. It's also a Chinese piece of junk but hey it's cheap, if it does work and hold up then quite the deal. 

I'm also planning to modify the electrical to allow the fridge to auto start an inverter and add one or two additional fans, one inside and one on the compressor. The interior fan will be small but should let it cool a little more efficiently. 



It's a tad bit larger than I wanted but I'm going to see if I can make it work out. But first...




I'm doing a little test on shore power and it's power consumption. 
The name plate shows the the rated current at .88A and the power at 75W. 
Killawatt readings during operation off shore power at 118VAC is 
Max .78A and about 70W as it fluctuates a bit. 


With the unit empty is cooled down to Food temp in less than two hours. 
I had set the T-stat high and I had a reading of 20F in that time. Not bad. 
I reset the T-stat up a bit and let it be over night, right at food temp no problem. 

So next I'll load it about 50% with food stuff and see how long it takes to stabilize at food temp. 

After that I'll see how it performs and take readings off a 1500W MSW inverter. 
Considering the small numbers on Shore power I know the 1500W inverter will fire this off no problem. 
I have a maller 400W inverter that I think will handle it just fine. We shall see. If so that may get dedicated to the fridge. 

 

 

[ViaVacavi]

I've done the same thing you're describing on two Magic Chef refrigerator/freezer combo units with great success. The completed conversion is cheap and easy. The resulting converted fridges use around 30 Amp-hours per day and have been perfectly reliable, even at severe tilt angles.
https://vanlivingforum.com/Thread-DIY-How-to-make-your-own-12V-Fridge?page=7
It's a long thread, but starting at post #68 I detail the exact conversion steps.

Good luck! Feel free to join in at the DIY thread, it would be nice to have multiple refrigerator conversions documented there

 

[jimindenver]

Nice little fridge and decent numbers too. I'm always talking about the Edgestar 3.1 2 door rated for .64a but it's not easy to get. Looking at your fridge got me looking at some of the others. There are 10 ft 2 doors that are rated for 1a. That's less than twice the power for over 3 times the space. In comparison most 1 ft cube fridges are rated for 1.5a. That means I could use the propane fridge as storage and back up.

 

[MikeRuth]

So a little update here. The last couple days I have had the unit about 50% full and the outdoor temp has been roughly 80F. Yesterday I did some temp checking of the compressor and found out that the condenser coils are built into each side of the unit. The sides warm up a bit.

At 80F the compressor had been rising up to 120F,I added air flow from a portable fan and within an hour the compressor had dropped to 90ish. In cooler air this morning I noticed it was down to 81F so adding an external fan drawing air over the compressor is a go and should help with efficiency. This morning temp was to cold inside so I raise the t-stat setting a bit. Small amount of frost has already built up on the freezer, so it will be interesting to see how frequently a defrost will be needed.

I picked up a cheap small 110 to 12VDC converter rated at .5amp to install a fan inside the fridge. Goal is to mount under the freezer to circulate the air and hopefully realize again better efficiency and more even cooling. There is no need to convert the control circuit to 12Volts hence the small converter inside. Haven't decided if I want to run the compressor fan from 12 direct or with another converter. Using a second converter would make it 110VAC plug and play, simplicity. Best efficiency? Nah but were not talking power robbing amps.

BTW after the first night I had two frozen solid bottles of water from the freezer .

 

[jimindenver]

Good deal. Thank you for the info. That's one thing compressor fridges have over propane, they get cold and recover so much faster.

 

[MikeRuth]

thought I would add an update on this....
I have the fridge now about 9 months. I have only had a few occasions to use it in the van, but it rides with me all the time.
In every case that I do use it so far, I have plugged into shore power usually overnight to let it get down to temp. Then transfer over to the inverter.
so far I have no issues, keeps everything in the 35 to 40 degree range just fine.
I haven't added the fan to the back yet as I mentioned above. In fact I had bought a 12V fan but I think it would be wiser to just get a 110VAC fan and tap the feed to the compressor.
Conditions have range from comfy outside temps of 60 to 80 and as high recently as 110, fridge was still at 38 degrees.
So for a measly $80.00 I'm happy.

 

[Whitey]

thought I would add an update on this....
I have the fridge now about 9 months. I have only had a few occasions to use it in the van, but it rides with me all the time.
In every case that I do use it so far, I have plugged into shore power usually overnight to let it get down to temp. Then transfer over to the inverter.
so far I have no issues, keeps everything in the 35 to 40 degree range just fine.
I haven't added the fan to the back yet as I mentioned above. In fact I had bought a 12V fan but I think it would be wiser to just get a 110VAC fan and tap the feed to the compressor.
Conditions have range from comfy outside temps of 60 to 80 and as high recently as 110, fridge was still at 38 degrees.
So for a measly $80.00 I'm happy.


Are you running it off the 400 watt inverter?

 

[SternWake]

I use a 12v 40mm computer fan inside mine. It only draws 0.03 amps and such a low amp draw should only provide modest extra heating for the cooling unit to remove.

high CFM on an internal fan is not required, not desired

My internal fan evens out nternal temperatures drastically, and also allows a much lesser setting on the thermostat to keep all parts of the fridge sub 35f.

Be sure the compressor actually runs on 115vac before tapping its wiring for a 115vac fan.

 

[UptownSport]

Interesting question.

Are you running it off the 400 watt inverter?

 

[MikeRuth]

Interesting question.

No sir, wouldn't even think of trying. This is a compressor fridge, Start up current is high and way over the 400 Watt capacity. 

It does startup just fine on the HF 2000W PWM inverter. 

Mike R