Isotherm Fridge Install - Huge Upgrade! - How to build an Overlander!

welcome back everyone time to get something productive done for once as many of you who have followed the channel for a long time might remember we used to have our Engel fridge/freezer underneath this dinette seat and I built a drawer slide mechanism that we could pull it out and keep the seat cushion in place and that dress slide was that whole mechanism was just too heavy and rugged enough and so it kind of started falling apart and for that reason we moved it over here so this is where most of you will know our fridge lives and this is an Engel chest fridge freezer it can be a fridge or a freezer but not both at the same time and we always had intentions to buy two of them having one mounted in the kitchen counter here and the other under this dinette seat either with a flip-up cushion or a sliding mechanism of some kind to pull out from the side of the seat here unfortunately due to cost constraints we bought one at a time just to see how we'd like it and unfortunately since then they've discontinued that model I really like the chest style because as you know when you open a fridge door all the cold air will slide out the bottom and I felt that this kept that cold air in and so you could get whatever you want and it would be more efficient that way anyway we couldn't get that one anymore and so we were making do with what we had and for the most part seven to ten days we could keep cold fresh food in this size single fridge freezer fridge it's only fridge in our case but for shopping trips that needed to last longer than that longer than seven days or so when we were in Mexico we were finding vegetables even like bell peppers which we wouldn't necessarily refrigerate we're starting to go bad quicker because of the heat and so we needed more refrigeration space and we didn't have it so then we went to Overland Expo 2019 an isotherm had their demo van there with all many of the fridges they offer fridge freezer combinations and so on and so Caesar there gave us a tour of all the features of each of the models and they had a 20% discount at the show so we picked up an isotherm 85 drawer which we'll be installing today and here it is we had it shipped to Colorado for my 4 van he received it for us and I've just got it plugged in here on the countertop just to confirm everything's working and it is as you can see there's a top drawer which is the freezer a cheese rack and then the main draw area here and it's got really slick and maybe didn't even show it but the the soft closed mechanism really pulls it closed once it decides to click so it's all working I do need to make a few little adjustments before we install it I need this fan not blowing inward but blowing outward so that it exhausts air out of that cabinet if it hasn't been made painfully obvious yet it is going underneath this dinette seat so when that's installed I need the air blowing outward and then there's a piece of trim that fits along the bottom here that wasn't installed for shipping safety but it needs to get put on - ok so it's going right here under this dinette and all of our interior cabinetry has all been constructed with one-inch square aluminum tubing and to that I have drilled and tapped machine screws into the tubing to hold all these panels on and I did that because I can remove any panel and take it right down to a skeleton for jobs just like this or if we damage something or configuration changes for whatever reason it's all bolted together so let's take it apart so that one didn't necessarily need to come off but just for visual clarity and ease of access I pulled it off because it's quick and easy okay and when I built this I thought we might eat extra stuff materials so in many places where there is a void I just stuffed some extra material for problems just like this now if we move inside here i'll show you my strategy from where we're putting this fridge okay so inside this compartment now this surface here is our wheel well the driver side wheel well and a majority of the fridge will be just sitting on here but it does drop down here in front of that so I need to transcribe this height of the wheel will onto the that the back of that panel so I'm just using a board and a pencil and now I mostly have a line okay so I've got the inside marked now let's just pull this off okay so moving now to the installation and usage instruction manual included with the fridge we can see our drawer 85 model has a cutout dimensions of 500 millimeters by 630 convert 630 millimeters to inches 630 millimeters is equal to 24 point eight zero three inches so doing some quick google math I can now use my American on metric measure tape and Mark out the rest of this hole okay so we're actually here at Colorado 4x4 van headquarters and he's graciously given us access to his shop and tools I've pulled the riving knife off because we're going to need to plunge cut this panel [Music] okay so you stopped short of the corners here by just a little bit just so I didn't have too much to cover up I'm just gonna finish this off with every who Verlander see the weapon okay so just gonna screw this back in for a quick test fit alright let's see if she fits nah tea bag alright so the recommended hole size is actually quite sloppy and the mounting holes here are right on the edge of the cut so I've raided Bill's garage found some scrap strips of plywood I'm going to cut to fit inside there glue them on so that the screws have something more substantial to bite on - all right so I've got some backer boards cut to size here and some construction adhesive thanks Bill in there and thankfully bill has a plethora of these quick grip style clamps you'll see why in just a moment and now just put a little hole in here mutti Beauty okay once again for the second time hopefully I don't glue this to the aluminum frame or smear it all over my seat cushion fits in there nice and snug I'll clamp it anyway [Music] so this is a pretty big drill but I intend to put machine screws through here with washers and lock nuts on the back and those furring strips and calling them fraying strips run right to the bottom so they can support some of the load there as well because this is a pretty thin lightweight panel okay so next to the course is electrical now this unit to my surprise came with a 110 adapter I have no use for that but I might in the future so I'm just gonna leave it back there we do have a ton of space back here as you've probably gleaned by now and I'm going to utilize that it won't go to waste I'm going to be relocating our inverter and some other equipment that's never used back there but the priority right now is the 12-volt power cord and they have this great yellow placard in four languages to remind you that negative is black red is positive and you should keep these wires as short as possible and if you need to be longer follow the instructions in the manual for wire gauge in my case I've got a grounded aluminum chassis right here so I'm going to put this eyelet on here and just ground it right on that bolt and then this wire just runs up to our fuse walk which is just behind this dinette seat here so I'll do that now okay you know for the positive I need to run it from here all the way to underneath here to pass the batteries and up to the fuses and if you know me right now you know I'm a huge fan of soldering connections and not butt connectors so here you go shrink tube strip way more wire than you think you need twisting them in a twisty configuration thusly and that in itself could do in a pinch if you lock tape that it would probably be fine but I'm going to solder it so here I'm trying to heat the wire not the solder the little bit of an exception is that you put on some solder okay so once you've got your solder joint there put a piece of high quality double wall shrink tube on there [Music] we nicey-nice okay inside the utility room we've got the other end of that spool of wire and just kind of give you guys a tour of the wire track here gonna feed it behind this nonsense and so this wire is just going to run up here and I can cut it here Leslie strip it thusly and then Spade terminal thusly that's what that looks like and then I don't honestly I don't know how you're supposed to crimp these with a conventional tool probably need the special tool I would far sooner that that was soldered somehow but it's not okay so the wire comes from the front here I'm going to write it inside this wire track does a little bit of a u-turn here so I've got a little bit of extra length terminated with the Spade connector down to this fuse block and as you can see it's complaining that the fuse has blown because the fuse does not yet exist okay so I'm gonna guess the 10 amp fuse I'll go read the manual later seems to work and then just cover all the wires back up nicely nice let's go see if it's working okay now checking the user's manual the drawer 85 it says should be pulling 6 amps so let's check that nope we've got our luca crank clamp and if we clamp it on the positive power here it's pulling 4.5 amps and we've just turned it on so that should be approximately the highest current it should pull the manual does say to put a 15 amp fuse in so I'm going to run out and change that to a 15 amp and then clean up this disaster zone and then we'll get care to give you a final review all right so as you can see it's quite the upgrade going from the 40 liters that we had here to the 85 liters that we now have and I moved over most of our fridge contents and you can see how much space we still have it's really nice to have this extra rack under here and the other thing I think we're really going to enjoy is having enough room to put in our water bottles so we can have cold water there's a really nice space up here for cans and of course the little freezer on top and yeah really looking forward to it all right so there you have it I'm very impressed all the folds are super sharp and crisp the stainless steel looks like it was all laser-cut it's it's an excellent looking unit drawer slides are very smooth my one little gripe I guess is that the latch that holds this in not so much the latch but the retainer is a little bit stiff that might work in in time but a little stiff to get out but I'd rather have it stay in than falling out I guess and it's nice as you close it it gets to a certain point and then it sucks itself shut so super happy with that I'd like to thank n'doul Lobosco for setting us up with this isotherm 85 litre drawer so if you're interested in picking up one of these or any of the other isotherm fridges check out the link in the description and head over to their website that's going to be it for this time thanks so much for watching we'll see you next time you

Channel: Everlanders

Views: 35,555

Keywords: RV Fridge, Overlanding Fridge, Isotherm, Engle, Engel, isotherm install, rv fridge install, dometic fridge, Stainless RV Fridge, Camper Fridge, DIY camper Fridge, marine fridge, arb fridge, van life couple, van life cooking, car camping essentials, car camping setup, rv fridge not cooling, marine fridge not cooling, marine fridge 12v, marine fridge kit, marine fridge compressor, arb fridge vs dometic, arb fridge review, arb fridge freezer 37 qt, arb fridge freezer

Id: kyMYBF6_olo

Length: 17min 48sec (1068 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 26 2019