12 V cooler

Bumpyroad wrote:

Gdetrailer wrote:


Personally, dump the 12V cooler and use a decent well insulated ice chest, fill the ice chest with homemade ice blocks (we use quart size food containers to freeze blocks). The bigger blocks will last much longer than a bunch of small ice cubes.

or just put that same block of ice in his 12 volter and unplug it when in the museum etc.
bumpy

You can do that, however those 12V coolers are physically bigger and hold much less than a ice chest of similar physical size, have less insulation than a ice chest and unlike a ice chest not waterproof and will leak depending on how high the interior "heatsink fins" is placed.

We USED to carry a ice chest in vehicle but that was when we drank a lot of soft drinks. Got smart, dumped the softdrinks while driving instead opting for using real Thermos bottles with water and ice cubes. Good Thermos bottles can easily keep your water ice cold for 8hrs with only 4 ice cubes.

We refill the Thermos bottles whenever we stop for fuel, restroom breaks or site seeing from a 3.5 gallon water jug we keep in our RV fridge.

We use a 18oz Thermos bottle like this one..



No more ice chest in the vehicle, priceless!

Generally we do not keep refrigerated food in the vehicle, we prefer to pull over at rest stops, parking lots and picnic areas and eat.

However IF we wanted to, we could put a couple of premade cold sandwiches in a small insulated "lunch box" and use a couple of reusable "ice packs".

You HAVE a RV with a refrigerator, might as well use it!

Our life got much easier once we eliminated pesky things like refrigerated items in vehicle.

I would not wish to bet my life on those 12V "coolers", the fact that they cannot cool any more than 40F below the AMBIENT air temp would give me pause for concern.. Your vehicle interior air temp can easily exceed 120F in less than 15 minutes on a nice hot sunny day which means your food will easily reach 80F putting you at risk..