Hi guy's just thought I would let people know about our fridge playing up. It is now about three and a half years old, yes, out of the 3 year warranty period. The fridge was getting noisy every time it started up, which was about every 10 minutes or so. It sounded like a speedboat in the distance, but kept getting louder as the weeks went by, until it was getting so loud that it was waking us up when it was about 10meters away. So when I was at the 4wd show I asked one of the guys that had a fridge stand what would be causing it. He said it could possibly be a rubber mount popped out or broken and referred me to Olbis on Ipswich Road Rocklea where they repair Engels. I rang Olbis, they have a 4 to 6 week wait on repairs so they referred me to Recreational Fridge Repairs, just off Compton Road Slacks Creek, but they were going to take up to 4 weeks.
I had a day off work with spare time so I thought I would pull the fridge apart, which was quite easy, only a few self tapper screws holding the end cover on where the motor was, but there was no sign of any rubber mounts. When turning it on the sound was coming from the fan which was covered in dust a couple of mm thick on the blades, so I cleaned it off, but the vibration of the fan when spinning was what was making all the noise. The fan was only held on by 2 screws and had a plug on the wiring so I thought I would just buy another fan, so I rang Olbis, they had none left and it would be 1 week before getting more. So I rang Recreational Fridge Repairs and the guy was on lunch so ring back later While I was waiting, I rang Dick Smith and Jaycar Electronics thinking I could pick 1 up from them, but they didn't stock 24 volt ones. While explaining to the guy at Jaycar the fan is just like the little box fans used in computers to cool them but the Engel was 24 volt, he said all they had were 12volt and all you would need is a $1.50 resistor in the line to reduce the current flow. I rang the Recreational Fridge place back to find that they had 24 volt fans in stock. Great I thought till I heard the price only $55. Now I have half a dozen new little box computer fans just sitting at home with identical mounting points and same air flow to the 24 volt original fan so I went to Jaycar and bought the $1.50 resistor, soldered it in line with the fan, and now I have spare fans if needed. It has been working perfectly now, nice and quietly for about a month. Just thought people should know if they are having problems or, maybe even clean the fan on the Engel before it gets out of balance and becomes noisy.
Ron
Should have bought a Waeco Ron, had ours for 7 years with no trouble so far (touch wood). The problem we had on the Coff's recce was due to the panel beaters wiring up the plug in the car incorrectly.
Thanks for the interesting post................... we have our Engel for 7 years and it
has been absolutely trouble free. I think the 'swing motor' technology in the Engel
makes them the most reliable 12v fridge for hash Aussie travel conditions.
The addition of the cooling fan came out in the model that we purchased. To date, our fan has been very quiet, but it is now something that we will keep an eye on.
User deleted! 
