I have owned our 5th wheeler for all but 5 years and in all that time the 12v operation of the fridge has been hooked up to the van batteries. This is far from ideal as the van batteries and solar panels do not have enough capacity and the batteries are quickly flattened.
I have decided to redo the wiring and hook it direct to the ute battery. We already have a Redarc battery isolator to prevent the tow vehicle battery from going flat when the engine is not running and this will allow us to run the fridge on the tug battery (instead of the van batteries) or turning the fridge off while driving.
The main reason for doing this is when we head to the mainland and having to turn the fridge off for the Bass Stait crossing. As soon as we arrive in Melbourne we will be able to run the fridge straight away. We do not use LPG while driving as it is unsafe.
Access from the back of the fridge to run the new wiring to the front of the van is done by removing the fuse panel to the left which is under the fridge and a small panel to the right of the photo inside the pantry.
12v panels to the right, the original 25amp fridge fuse is the top one
Close up of the 25amp fuse. It willbe a spare now
Update as of March 2017 red and blue wire have been replaced with 6B&S cable as per Dometic specifications (misread earlier). Total cable length is over 12 metres long and required larger cable.
The new wires connected to the rear of fridge.
A closer view, the lpg tube is well clear of all wiring even though it doesn’t look like it in the photo.
AES model fridges have 5 different ways to connect the D+ input connection on theback of the fridge to automatically switch from one power source to another.
Dometic AES Wiring diagrams is not available at the moment (30/3/2017)
I have bypassed the fridge movement switch and hook the D+ connection straight to the Element DC positive connection. As I have a Redarc isolator to the Anderson plug that is only hooked up to the fridge in the van.
The original anderson plug will not be connected in the immeadiate future. This should not be a problem as I have 260w of solar on the roof of the 5th wheeler. Time will tell.
The wiring under the fridge and through to under the pantry.
Under the pantry and down through the floor using the same hole as the water tank filler. This is inside the chassis rail and make running the cable to the front of van easy as it will be beside existing wiring looms.
Wiring is up through the front boot and out to the pin box and out to a n Anderson plug with a fuse incorporated into the wiring loom to ptrotect against any problems.
A 7.5m HDMI cable to the front TV and an extra 12v cable to 2 double 12v outlets was also run while the cupboards and panels were removed.
more photos later
Chris and Dianne's Ultima adventure 