Waeco fridge parts manual

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VBsteve

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Hi everyone,

I have been given the job to try and repair a CF35 waeco fridge. The fridge worked fine for about 3 years and the stopped for no reason. No LED's, internal light and signs of life on 12 volt or 240volt. I checked both fuses all ok, checked both supplies and all ok. I believe the fault is with the internal intergrated mains adapter. Mainly because that what the hand book troubleshooting manual has pointed me to.

What I am looking for is a wiring diagram or parts manual to try and check this before I start replacing parts. I know I could take this to a repair centre but there is no fun in this. I have been told if I fix it I can keep it.

This is a good plan for a 2nd small fridge if i could keep the repair costs low

Thanks
VBSteve.
 
Steve, if the circuit is like my CR140, it's a 12/24V DC circuit that has a 240V with step-down&rectifier to drive the compressor.

You state that there is absolutely NO sign of life in any part of the fridge in any mode?

The very first thing I'd do is open the black circuit box that has the connectors on the outside and inspect the board for visible damage. There may be a surface-mounted polyfuse which has blown - good luck finding it, they didn't include those in the CR140s so I can't help you locate it. I'd also remove each connector from the side and give each one a good clean. Double-check that when connected to 12V, you're actually getting 12V at the input (top two wires on the CR140).
 
will be the power supply if it has one of those black external power supplys i asssume thats what tony is talking about. I sublease my shed off a camping store and there warranty stuff ends up in my shed for 6-8mnths before getting dumped(can be handy for freebies :)
before they stopped selling waeco because there absolute shit we had an acerage of 15-20 of them sitting there as stuffed warranty claim items. If its not that it will be the whole display panel that will have fried, If you replace it that will fix the problem but they usually go again within 12-18mnths, best bet is to find a fridgy that will wire in a dirty old simple turn style resistor knob to control the temp like the engels have or bin it :)
have a mate thats a fridgy that fixed his a tonne of times and it just kept breaking so he rewired it with just a turn knob thermostat and hasn't had any trouble for about 2.5yrs
 
Thanks guys.
I plugged it back in to 240volts and away it has been going. I will run it for now and see what happens. After that I will price some parts and then make my mind up what to do.

VBSteve.
 
Steve, that's good news. Does it work on 12V at all? Fuse?

It could still be the circuit. It could be the connectors on the side. It could also be the low voltage detection circuit which won't start the fridge if the voltage on the other side of the poly fuse is below 10.75V. You need to use decent cable (or short cable) to stop it from losing enough voltage to trigger the failsafe and turn the fridge off.

Part of the problem with some Waeco models is the poly fuse designed to protect the circuit board was too low a value (3A when the fridge could draw 5A). Fuses will generally allow up to 3x their rated current before they blow, but between rated and limit, the fuse heats up and acts like a resistor. When you put a resistor into a circuit, the voltage on the far side drops - so the effect of this under-rated fuse was to reduce the apparent voltage on the far side of the poly fuse and THAT was where the voltage-sensing circuit was. Hence the problem - and the fix is to put a 10A fuse in place of the poly fuse. Waeco were doing this as a repair but I don't know if it even applies to your fridge.
 
Fridge is now working on both 12 and 240 volts and working well.
Is the poly fuse in the main circuit board controller?
When the fridge was not working even the by pass was switch over.

Make is very hard to find a fault when it's not there.
It is sad when you are waiting for something to not work so you try and fix it.

Vbsteve.
 
The poly fuse is on the circuit board. Not sure exactly where, but electrically it's not far from the input and it's before the voltage sensing circuit, which is why it's been such a problem.

Try dropping the 12V input voltage a little and see how it behaves - attach a driving light to the battery or something like that. Monitor the voltage at the back of the fridge. If it falls too low (where the polyfuse will create the voltage loss issue in the circuit) you'll see the fridge shut down and the voltage rise a little (because the load stops).

I had to remove all of the shitty cable that connected to my fridge and I put 4GA automotive cable in its place. Voltage drop from my battery to the fridge went from 1.5V down to 0.3V and now my fridge behaves itself.

It's the bane of electrical devices. Thin cables = high loss = operational difficulties with devices that try to protect the setup.
 
Well using the knowledge and comment from this website I was able to deduce that in fact I was having very similar issues to what seemed to be a bad polyfuse. I bought a new one from:

http://www.way-cold.com/service/polywaeco.htm

And the problem went away. I was thinking if this happens again that I'll take up Old,Tony up on 10A fuse in replacement of the polyfuse. Any suggestions whether to use a fast or slow blow fuse if one replaces the polyfuse with a 10A? Other than that thanks for the help in deducing the polyfuse on my unit, I guess its a bad design on Waeco's part to have designed with an under rated fuse. I really don't have enough knowledge to feel secure yet in replacing the poly with a regular fuse.

Regards
Tim
 
Welcome to the forum.

I'd start with a normal fuse but if that proves unsuccessful use a slow-blow. The fast blow fuse might not like the compressor startup current which could exceed 10A momentarily. The slow-blow will give a little time before it lets loose, giving the compressor time to settle into operation. If something does go wrong in the circuit (very, very unlikely) the slow blow fuse will still provide protection but circuits should be protected by fast fuses - motors by slow (generally speaking).

(Yes, I know they're "soft start" motors, but they're compressors and they will ALWAYS have a slightly higher startup current than their nominal running current - even an unloaded motor does, just to get itself moving).
 
I have just fixed the POLYFUSE issue with my CF50, not too hard, but be careful when pulling the board and its box from behind the condensor, you need to masage the pipes a little to get it free.

Check this thread, it is a wealth of information.

http://thegreynomads.activeboard.com/t42448120/waeco-powersupply/?page=1&sort=newestFirst

The factory 12v conection into the fridge is crap on every level too.

I did plenty of measuring drop etc when I had the fridge apart, the internal cable size for the 12v power is of a decent size (at least on the CF50).

I was dropping .9v under load through the poly fuse alone, that is, 12.8 going in, 11.9 v out, then into the compressor.

With the polyfuse replaced it is not under 0.1v drop. The fuse was getting so hot you could not touch it.

I did some measurements of the voltage at the battery, then the plug on the inside of the fridge, right where the plug comes through.

With the fridge running, just moving the cable up and down a small amount, I could get 1 volt drop, with occasional total loss of power, I can see no way to fix the plug other than replace with something decent.

I am going to fit a 50amp anderson plug to the outside of the fridge with about 1 meter of lead hooked up to 6mm cable into the fridge.

I have been running the fridge around the clock from my van battery, being fed by a 120w solar panel, so far so good, fridge is on ZERO, not one shutdown due to low volts, and fridge is using 1 amp less whn running than it was, all good.

Here is a picture of the poly fuse
 

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I was looking at the same possibility with our CR-140 that I'd installed in the caravan, but it turned out that the cable heading to it (supplied by the caravan manufacturer) was inadequate. Replaced it, no problem.

Default wiring for the caravan is for the 3-way fridge - so the cable only has to be large enough to cater for the current, and voltage drop isn't considered because it's just a resistor (heater element) on the end of the cable.
 

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