A friend was given 2 Engel fridges. One was a worker & it didn't have the 12V DC lead & he wasn't prepared to pay $50 for a lead. He was going to permanently wire a 12V lead to the Fridge. I decided to investigate Why Engel had a slide to cover the 240V AC socket. Well when run on 12V dc theres mains voltage on the socket as its using a common transformer for the 240V, & as a 12V inverter to power the compressor.
Now the reason for dismantling the fridge. The compressor is faulty & was drawing 7.69A & pulling the 22V rail down to 8V. So not worth repairing, but thaught was worth investigatin an Engel fridge.
Great pictures DeBe.....being non qualified in electrics and refrigeration I'll stick my neck out and ask how will you combat the corrosion on the condenser tubes before they rust through?
Regards
DeBe said
05:41 PM Dec 28, 2014
Wire brush them & spray paint them before they get to the state of the ones in the picture.
DeBe said
05:45 PM Dec 28, 2014
If there is going to be electronic problems, they are most likely to be where the switching FETs are soldered to the circuit board. Or the relays & power lead sockets on the circuit board.
That screwdriver looks like a Microwave Oven repairmans screwdriver.
DeBe said
09:09 PM Dec 28, 2014
Not quite ive onlyever had one that was charged, but still always check. Those are from powersupply capacitors that had 375V dc on them.
hako said
09:11 PM Dec 28, 2014
DeBe wrote:
Wire brush them & spray paint them before they get to the state of the ones in the picture.
....and if it were the rusted tubes in the picture what would be the course of action?
Radar said
09:42 PM Dec 28, 2014
Hi DeBe.
I would like you to be in ear shot of Brisbane, I would let you play with my very old seriously old Engel. It looks something like those ones. I got it in 2004 2 nd hand and the gentleman that sold it to me was talking a lot about mid 80 ties. When fishing was good at Fraser Island and Rainbow beach. Yes very old but was good one until the last couple of years when little things electric started to blow fuses when on 240 volts, fixed that by not using the 240 volt side.
Then earlier this year noticed the 12 volt lead where it plugged into the frig was showing burn marks for a better word for it and not making good contact. So a quick ring around gave me some ideas how to quick fix the problem and this was by 12 volt permanently wired in. Yes got that to work by joining a couple of wires, once again something to do with the 240 volt operation, now it is permanently wired to 12 volt with a Anderson plug and was working a treat.
Just when I thought the old thing was going to be around a lot longer and we were depending on it to keep the excess beverage cold over the Christmas period it decided not start, well it did start but you could not rely on it, I think it's more then I can handle, a gentle shake and it starts but cuts out after a few minutes of running. The frig will start to get cold, I also think it may be a bit heavy on the battery life. Ralph
DeBe said
09:45 PM Dec 28, 2014
Probably wire brush & use Kill rust paint & hope for the best. The pipe work is only Bundy tubing cheep & nasty, used on Engel Waeco & most domestic fridges & freezers. Evakool use copper tubing on there condencers.
Mike C said
10:37 PM Dec 28, 2014
I have one from the early 80's still going strong.. amazing little beast and fits neatly in the back of the car.
cheers
Mike
hako said
11:22 PM Dec 28, 2014
DeBe wrote:
Probably wire brush & use Kill rust paint & hope for the best. The pipe work is only Bundy tubing cheep & nasty, used on Engel Waeco & most domestic fridges & freezers. Evakool use copper tubing on there condencers.
Thanks DeBe, as always your replies are straight to the point.
Regards
oldtrack123 said
12:03 AM Dec 29, 2014
Mike C wrote:
I have one from the early 80's still going strong.. amazing little beast and fits neatly in the back of the car.
cheers
Mike
Hi Mike
That's a young one My original & still going strong is a1968 Model
Spent it's whole life in 4WDS
Nice Post& pics DeBe
PeterQ
Mike C said
06:24 AM Dec 29, 2014
Hi Mike
That's a young one My original & still going strong is a1968 Model
Spent it's whole life in 4WDS
Nice Post& pics DeBe
PeterQ
That is a good run..
Mine was second hand and came with an old Hartley Trailer Sailor that I bought in 82 so no idea of its build date.
They were made well on those days :)
cheers
Mike
03_Troopy said
08:14 AM Dec 29, 2014
Darryl always puts up good clear pics.. great post.. and yes, been bitten by a few of the P/S caps myself (mainly in TV's).. amazing how long they can stay charged if no bleed resistor eh. I used to have some resistors with clips attached for bleeding, or a light bulb with clips too.
oldtrack123 said
12:15 PM Dec 29, 2014
03_Troopy wrote:
Darryl always puts up good clear pics.. great post.. and yes, been bitten by a few of the P/S caps myself (mainly in TV's).. amazing how long they can stay charged if no bleed resistor eh. I used to have some resistors with clips attached for bleeding, or a light bulb with clips too.
Hi
I do hope No one who does not understand the risks poke into Micro ovens
.AS you may know a capacitor even with a bleed resistor NEVER realy fully discharges.
PeterQ
03_Troopy said
09:08 AM Dec 30, 2014
oldtrack123 wrote:
03_Troopy wrote:
Darryl always puts up good clear pics.. great post.. and yes, been bitten by a few of the P/S caps myself (mainly in TV's).. amazing how long they can stay charged if no bleed resistor eh. I used to have some resistors with clips attached for bleeding, or a light bulb with clips too.
Hi
I do hope No one who does not understand the risks poke into Micro ovens
.AS you may know a capacitor even with a bleed resistor NEVER realy fully discharges.
PeterQ
Apologies for hijacking the thread....
What Peter said...X 100
No 240V electrical equipment should be poked around in unless you know what you're doing. And even then you need to be very vigilant of the dangers.
valiant81 said
09:11 AM Dec 30, 2014
Hi all;
Power supplys with charged caps were a real pain in the a** and like others l to used a 40 watt light bulb for discharging light mains filter caps ( and also used as a power supply load when working on power supplys as well ). I've seen the other tecks use a WELL insulated pair of long nose plyers to short out the filter caps in micro waves
While i didn't realy get into micro wave ovens, l have built a couple of high powered RF amplifiers for the HF band useing a a couple of valves in the output stage these puppys ran a plate voltage of about 2.2~2.4 Kv and about 800 ma. Two 10 Volt 15 Amp transformers just for heaters of the valves ( one each ) . Ended up useing a old micro wave cabinet to house evey thing in. Worked quiet well and was a real beast on air. These were good for about 400 Watts with about 20 Watts drive from my transmitter.
-- Edited by valiant81 on Tuesday 30th of December 2014 09:12:46 AM
-- Edited by valiant81 on Tuesday 30th of December 2014 09:13:36 AM
DeBe said
09:45 AM Dec 30, 2014
Taking pics of circuit boards for clarity was done in natural shaded light. The camera was a Nikon Coolpix 4200 (only 4Megapixels) using Macro feature. Very cheep camera $5 at a garage sale. If you look closely there is quite a few degraded solder joints on the PCB that were about to give problems. When asking for help on a forum good clear pictures are generaly more helpful than a description.
colt11 said
11:21 PM Dec 23, 2020
Hello everybody I am a new member.
I have quite an old MRFT-540-A4 Engel fridge/freezer, it seems that this model is not as well known as the MRFT 540 B/C/D/E.?
Does anybody out there have a user manual for this fridge?.
My problem with Engel is it works fine as a fridge, but when using as a freezer never turns off, I will add lid seal is nor perfect as I put a torch inside and turned out lights and there is a lot of visible light from inside fridge. I then gaffer taped all around seal area, but this did not seem to make any difference. ie fridge kept running while on freeze
All correspondence on this issue greatly appreciated
Thankyou
Colin
-- Edited by colt11 on Wednesday 23rd of December 2020 11:24:09 PM
DeBe said
11:50 PM Dec 23, 2020
First when its running contiously what temperature does it go down to?
yobarr said
10:01 AM Dec 24, 2020
colt11 wrote:
Hello everybody I am a new member.
I have quite an old MRFT-540-A4 Engel fridge/freezer, it seems that this model is not as well known as the MRFT 540 B/C/D/E.?
Does anybody out there have a user manual for this fridge?.
My problem with Engel is it works fine as a fridge, but when using as a freezer never turns off, I will add lid seal is nor perfect as I put a torch inside and turned out lights and there is a lot of visible light from inside fridge. I then gaffer taped all around seal area, but this did not seem to make any difference. ie fridge kept running while on freeze
All correspondence on this issue greatly appreciated
Thankyou. Colin
-- Edited by colt11 on Wednesday 23rd of December 2020 11:24:09 PM
Hi Colin,and welcome.Mr Google supplies such a manual if you simply type in the model number,then "Engel".Cheers
grandpa said
05:30 PM Feb 11, 2026
Hi just came across your post, fantastic detailed photos, I was looking for info's on exactly the same fridge same Model, my Fridge just stopped running on 12v, OK on 240! took it apart but did not take the circuit board out of the box just wanted to check the fuse inside. seems OK any idea of what could have happened? or what to check, I am not an electronic wizard but tinker a bit around the edges and mostly I find something, any help would be appreciated .
On another matter just bought myself recently a new Mercedes Sprinter Motorhome hoping that I would have 5 Years of Warranty and peace, how wrong was I !
The following is just general info & pics of whats in a Engel MRFT-5400-G4.
This is Condensor & Evaporator thermistors & Fan. Also some info on the fridge.
Wave forms on the Compressor the sine wave is 22Vac when run on 240Vac. The modified square wave is 22V peak when run on 12Vdc.
A friend was given 2 Engel fridges. One was a worker & it didn't have the 12V DC lead & he wasn't prepared to pay $50 for a lead. He was going to permanently wire a 12V lead to the Fridge. I decided to investigate Why Engel had a slide to cover the 240V AC socket. Well when run on 12V dc theres mains voltage on the socket as its using a common transformer for the 240V, & as a 12V inverter to power the compressor.
Now the reason for dismantling the fridge. The compressor is faulty & was drawing 7.69A & pulling the 22V rail down to 8V. So not worth repairing, but thaught was worth investigatin an Engel fridge.
Regards
Wire brush them & spray paint them before they get to the state of the ones in the picture.
If there is going to be electronic problems, they are most likely to be where the switching FETs are soldered to the circuit board. Or the relays & power lead sockets on the circuit board.
Not quite ive onlyever had one that was charged, but still always check. Those are from powersupply capacitors that had 375V dc on them.
....and if it were the rusted tubes in the picture what would be the course of action?
Hi DeBe.
I would like you to be in ear shot of Brisbane, I would let you play with my very old seriously old Engel. It looks something like those ones. I got it in 2004 2 nd hand and the gentleman that sold it to me was talking a lot about mid 80 ties. When fishing was good at Fraser Island and Rainbow beach. Yes very old but was good one until the last couple of years when little things electric started to blow fuses when on 240 volts, fixed that by not using the 240 volt side.
Then earlier this year noticed the 12 volt lead where it plugged into the frig was showing burn marks for a better word for it and not making good contact. So a quick ring around gave me some ideas how to quick fix the problem and this was by 12 volt permanently wired in. Yes got that to work by joining a couple of wires, once again something to do with the 240 volt operation, now it is permanently wired to 12 volt with a Anderson plug and was working a treat.
Just when I thought the old thing was going to be around a lot longer and we were depending on it to keep the excess beverage cold over the Christmas period it decided not start, well it did start but you could not rely on it, I think it's more then I can handle, a gentle shake and it starts but cuts out after a few minutes of running. The frig will start to get cold, I also think it may be a bit heavy on the battery life. Ralph
Probably wire brush & use Kill rust paint & hope for the best. The pipe work is only Bundy tubing cheep & nasty, used on Engel Waeco & most domestic fridges & freezers. Evakool use copper tubing on there condencers.
cheers
Mike
Thanks DeBe, as always your replies are straight to the point.
Regards
Hi Mike
That's a young one
My original & still going strong is a1968 Model
Spent it's whole life in 4WDS
Nice Post& pics DeBe
PeterQ
That is a good run..
Mine was second hand and came with an old Hartley Trailer Sailor that I bought in 82 so no idea of its build date.
They were made well on those days :)
cheers
Mike
Hi
I do hope No one who does not understand the risks poke into Micro ovens
.AS you may know a capacitor even with a bleed resistor NEVER realy fully discharges.
PeterQ
Apologies for hijacking the thread....
What Peter said...X 100
No 240V electrical equipment should be poked around in unless you know what you're doing. And even then you need to be very vigilant of the dangers.
Hi all;
Power supplys with charged caps were a real pain in the a** and like others l to used a 40 watt light bulb for discharging light mains filter caps ( and also used as a power supply load when working on power supplys as well ). I've seen the other tecks use a WELL insulated pair of long nose plyers to short out the filter caps in micro waves
While i didn't realy get into micro wave ovens, l have built a couple of high powered RF amplifiers for the HF band useing a a couple of valves in the output stage these puppys ran a plate voltage of about 2.2~2.4 Kv and about 800 ma. Two 10 Volt 15 Amp transformers just for heaters of the valves ( one each ) . Ended up useing a old micro wave cabinet to house evey thing in. Worked quiet well and was a real beast on air. These were good for about 400 Watts with about 20 Watts drive from my transmitter.
-- Edited by valiant81 on Tuesday 30th of December 2014 09:12:46 AM
-- Edited by valiant81 on Tuesday 30th of December 2014 09:13:36 AM
Taking pics of circuit boards for clarity was done in natural shaded light. The camera was a Nikon Coolpix 4200 (only 4Megapixels) using Macro feature. Very cheep camera $5 at a garage sale. If you look closely there is quite a few degraded solder joints on the PCB that were about to give problems. When asking for help on a forum good clear pictures are generaly more helpful than a description.
Hello everybody I am a new member.
I have quite an old MRFT-540-A4 Engel fridge/freezer, it seems that this model is not as well known as the MRFT 540 B/C/D/E.?
Does anybody out there have a user manual for this fridge?.
My problem with Engel is it works fine as a fridge, but when using as a freezer never turns off, I will add lid seal is nor perfect as I put a torch inside and turned out lights and there is a lot of visible light from inside fridge. I then gaffer taped all around seal area, but this did not seem to make any difference. ie fridge kept running while on freeze
All correspondence on this issue greatly appreciated
Thankyou
Colin
-- Edited by colt11 on Wednesday 23rd of December 2020 11:24:09 PM
Hi Colin,and welcome.Mr Google supplies such a manual if you simply type in the model number,then "Engel".Cheers
Hi just came across your post, fantastic detailed photos, I was looking for info's on exactly the same fridge same Model, my Fridge just stopped running on 12v, OK on 240! took it apart but did not take the circuit board out of the box just wanted to check the fuse inside. seems OK any idea of what could have happened? or what to check, I am not an electronic wizard but tinker a bit around the edges and mostly I find something, any help would be appreciated .
On another matter just bought myself recently a new Mercedes Sprinter Motorhome hoping that I would have 5 Years of Warranty and peace, how wrong was I !
Grandpa