That's a very good point.The quickest way to prove the fridge is to jump out the fixed wiring installation with a temporary fused positive and a good negative earth. If the fridge is defective this will eliminate the painstaking task of tracking and exposing cables for testing.
DC voltage drop is normal and will be dependent an the cross section of cable and length of cable (both ways). Is the fridge running ok on fixed wiring?I have tested voltage on rear of fridge. Before compressor kicks in the volts are same as battery. When compressor is running the volts immediately drop by 0.70 volts at the fridge and then after about 2 minutes it went down to 11.32 volts and the battery voltage dropped by .28 volts and was steady at 12.48 with the compressor running. So numbers east to see.
Battery volts 12.76 compressor not on
Battery volts 12.48 compressor running
Fridge volts 11.32 compressor running
12.76 compressor not running.
Should there be that much volt drop to fridge?
Unfortunately I'm working today so I will have to run some tails tommorrow now. I'm going back to my original thoughts its battery or voltage related. It had gone warm again this morning. It's like the voltage must drop slightly below what it will operate on so I think running those tails will hopefully then prove the wiring through van.DC voltage drop is normal and will be dependent an the cross section of cable and length of cable (both ways). Is the fridge running ok on fixed wiring?
I done that yesterday and I had about .50volt dropped across negative and around 1volt on positive.Easy to check cables if you suspect the problem is in the wiring. Measure the voltage drop across each side of the circuit separately.
i.e. With all original wires in place, put your meter +ve lead on leisure battery +ve terminal and meter -ve lead on +ve connection on fridge. Any reading in that scenario will be the volt drop in the +ve connection to the fridge
Conversely...
Put your meter -ve lead on the leisure battery -ve terminal and meter +ve lead on the fridge -ve terminal which will give you the volt drop in the -ve circuit.
You may have to switch your meter down to a more sensitive scale if it's not the auto ranging type.
For those of us who have owned 6v Beetles we've done this many time to eliminate the volt drop problems in elderly electrical systems!