"Home Brew" Refrigeration...

[Derek Rowell]

I recently visited my brother in New Zealand. Kiwis are inveterate DIYers, and the previous owner of his boat had installed a home-made engine-driven refrigeration system around an automobile air conditionning compressor and a holding plate. That was one powerful little freezer! Cooled our beer right down with just a few minutes of running the engine. He says it takes very little operation to keep food absolutely frozen.I've not heard of using a car ac compressor before. My brother says it's common practice in NZ - is it done here?

 

[Paul]

Goldmine

How COOL is that! (pardon me)A drawing and instructions for a unit like thatwould sell like crazy on Ebay. You would becruising in style!

 

[Fred Ficarra]

By 'automotive' are you referring to a swash plate

compressor? The York style compressor with a crankshaft was used on cars in this country for many years. I think big trucks still use them. The problem with swash plate compressors in a marine freezer application is what happened to the Sanden my first vendor sold to me fifteen years ago. The rods sucked right out of the swash plate. You must never let them go into a vacuum state. They work, if components are sized properly and so on. The problem is the 'so on'. But hey, just my experience. As long as the beer is cold,,,

 

[Mark M Smith]

They do it here too

I was on a Morgan 41 that had the same type setup,..Made the cold plate out of two stainless steel food serving trays,..pretty simple setup,Raw water (motor) intake had a copper coil (To remove heat) then the setup was basically the compressor pushed freon to the "cold plate" (2 Food serving trays) which was filled with antifreeze (and more copper coils) It would freeze in about 5 Min of the motor running and would stay frozen for up to 7 hr after motor cutoff,..and that was in FL in the middle of the summer.Simple/cheapAlso I really think you could make a air conditioner on the same system by adding another "cold plate" and 12v fan setup.This guy had all the diagrams of the makeup of this system

 

[Richard Kollmann]

Multi Purpose Compessors

The commonly used engine driven refrigeration compressors were originally designed for air conditioning cars, trucks and off road equipment. In the 1960’s the earlier Crosby and Grunert engine driven refrigeration systems used the large Tecumseh cast iron compressors, used on Ford trucks and cars. In the 1970’s after the energy crises the cast iron models were replaced by a much lighter York aluminum model, in the smaller lighter cars. Many boats still use both of these compressors today for refrigeration. The earlier vertical compressors were replaced by a more friendly actual flow multi piston compressors. The most popular of the second generation compressors are the Sankyo models 505, 508, and 510. I installed a Sanko 508 in my boat’s refrigeration system in 1983 and it is still ticking after 8000 engine hours and most of that in charter back and forth to the Bahamas. The only maintenance this compressor has had is I painted it when the new engine was installed. All of the refrigeration kits I sold for the last twenty years used the 508 compressor with the low pressure switch set to seven inches of vacuum to insure the freezer plates were frozen solid. My Do It Yourself Boat Refrigeration book has over sixty designs for engine driven boat refrigeration.