HELLO Fitting Caravan Auxiliary to Patrol

[Jim Snowy River]

Hi. Need to fit a Auxiliary wire from my 2011 gu patrol directly to the Fridge in the Caravan. What l need to know is as it can not draw power from any batteries. The only power it can draw is when you start the Vehicle it has direct power to the fridge and when you turn off the engine there is to be no power draw. Any help would be greatfull........... P.S. What l need help with is where on the Patrol does the Auxiliary wire hook to.......

[Rossco]

Hey mate you will need to run a wire from your battery that is switched with a relay from acc trigger somewhere such as cig lighter or stereo. .

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[nipagu7]

i would run a standard basic anderson plug ( at rear ) setup . 4 gauge wire from battery to anderson plug at rear using a isolating solenoid and fuse/resetable fuse near the battery . this will run your fridge and top up batterys and other things that you may require depending on how you manage the supply at the caravan . if you just run smaller wires and decide to use it to run other things later you would have to upgrade or risk damage to equipment or wiring possibley causing a fire . the basic setup is very common if you decide to tow a different van or trailer chances are it will be setup to utilize this system . with the isolating solenoid there will be no power draw when the cars engine is turned off . there are plenty of packages on ebay and such that supply everything for the install . check them out carefully as they do have different wire sizes and different features on the solenoids . red arc solenoids are good quality.

[tryan277]

Jim
Need to advise what fridge you are wanting to power, Brand/Model and what trailer plug connection/connections you currently have on the caravan.

Cheers

[Jim Snowy River]

Hi nipagu7.
Thanks for posting
i run a Anderson plug from Patrol to Caravan that charges the Caravan Batteries. The Auxiliary wire l need to run is 10mm2 and it will have its own Anderson plug only for the fridge. The Isolating Solenoid and Fuse sounds the way to go if there is nowhere for the Auxiliary cable to break into as it must be free of any Battery while engine is going.

[tryan277]

Hi Jim
I asked about the Brand/model fridge you want to power as most 3 way caravan fridges "from about 10 years ago" "that's a guess" require a sensing wire connection in the trailer plug to let them know that they can draw power from the tow vehicle when the vehicle is running. When this "signal" is not there the fridge will attempt to get its power from another source.

If that's not the case then yes isolating solenoid and fuse would probably be suitable.

Cheers
Trevor

[mihit]

I assume the fridge runs off direct 12/24V power

I would be inclined to set up a few things....

1) a house battery in the van with low-voltage disconnect (LVD) charged by:

2) a dual battery setup off your vehicle/main...so it will only charge the van battery when starting battery is fully charged.

Otherwise you potentially run the risk, especially if doing short trips, of the starting battery never fully recovering from the start load, as the alternator now has the extra draw of the fridge...


--edit--
Wow, whole lot of posts turned up while typing...

[nipagu7]

ok . so how is the caravan battery charging set up . you really should have a isolating solenoid to protect the car battery from continually discharging after the car engine is switched off , and fuse to protect the wiring from shorting out and causing a fire at the car battery end . can the fridge run on 12v from the caravan battery . if so just charging the van battery as ( long as the charge rate exceeds the fridge draw rate ) i think would suffice ( of course making sure all wiring and fuses are in the appropriate place and correctly sized ) . depending on what type of battery/s the van has , you may have or probably should have a dc/dc charger . they may be costly but batteries are too , if you kill them. when sizing the wiring you must take into account the length of run , including the return run , as the total length otherwise the voltage drop can cause issues .
i just re-read your inital post . why can't the fridge draw from the caravan batteries ? solving this problem may be easier and cheaper than running a whole new charging system to just run the fridge.