Engel Fridge 240V wont work - Here's the reason..

[Timbo]

Hi all,

Some of you might know that I bought a Engel 40L fridge off ebay a couple months ago. It's in great condition but the 240v side of it didn't seem to work. I now know why (more or less) and just want to make a thread with my findings so that hopefully someone googling the same problem will know what's going on.

I have a friend who works with electronics all day at a power tool company. He knows all about capacitors and diodes, boards and relays etc.. So I took the fridge to him one night and we pulled it apart.

It turns out that the main capacitor had blown. I went out and bought a new one (was a tiny bit bigger) and we soldered it onto the board, put it all together and.. it didn't work.

After all the testing, it turns out that it's still the capacitor at fault. As my mate said "Products like this are made not to be reverse engineered".. in other words, unless you have the exact part.. and I mean EXACT, you're pretty much left to the mercy of a service man.

Now, I was told to call my local Engel service man and ask just for the power board for the 240v side as it'll be cheaper. Then, my mate can just put it all back together. I made the call but no, they do not sell single boards. You must buy a whole new power supply which was around $350.00.

You can't buy the exact capacitor required as it's a very odd type. I'm tipping Engel make them in house, or are at least supplied by Nippon exclusively for that one particular capacitor.

In the end, I'm saving some cash up to buy a whole new power supply which is probably a good thing since we kinda butchered the housing to make the new capacitor fit as it was taller than the factory one. And also, if something should happen to either board, I'll have all the re-usable factory parts (excepting one 240v capacitor) so it's not bad.

The fridge still works fine off the battery without the 240v power board connected as they are separate circuits. The power supply unit is easy to fit yourself as it's only a matter of taking th back off the fridge, un-doing a few screws and unplugging some plugs, then putting them all back in. It's a 10 minute job.

Anyway, hope this helps some body and saved hours of searching like I had too haha.

Tim

[TimE]

Just a thought, but why not buy a 240 to 12 v transformer and use that. I use one of these but I'm sure you could get something similar, but cheaper than $99, if you look around.

[davejones]

Did you end up getting this sorted out?

Dave

[MudRunnerTD]

Just a thought, but why not buy a 240 to 12 v transformer and use that. I use one of these but I'm sure you could get something similar, but cheaper than $99, if you look around.

That is the exact supply that my Waeco uses for 240v. unlike the Engel, the waeco only has one cord and either goes to your 12v in the car or to that 12v / 240 transformer. For the difference in price i'd do that for sure.