Refrigerator battery drain

[PWJoBob]

Pleasure Way Lexor. Battery won’t run refrigerator when driving, charge drops to 9 and alarm sounds. Refrigerator fine on propane. Battery will charge to 14 on generator or while driving, but as soon as we switch refrigerator to battery in anticipation of driving, the charge drops. Sound like an auxiliary battery issue?

[jaak1993]

If the drop is instantaneous when switching it is unlikely to be the battery and more likely to be high resistance in a load side connection downstream of the battery. I would start by checking voltages at the house fuse panel with and without fridge on dc power.

[PWJoBob]

Many thanks. Will check. Also drops power when driving for half hour., so not always instant.

[GallenH]

If that doesn't pinpoint your problem you could also check the 12v heater element. Your fridge mfg. probably has this info somewhere and it's usually not hard to disconnect the heating element from the circuit and do a resistance test on it.

[PWJoBob]

Thanks for good info for problem-solving. Everything checked out fine except the auxiliary batteries. Combined, only putting out equivalent of one., so replaced both. No problems since. Again, thanks for feedback!