Engel Thermal Fuse

The way I see fuses is two fold...they are there to protect the wiring /cable that they are feeding from over loading and they are also to protect the appliance they are supplying from they same....your 20 amp fuse may be fine for the size cable you are running....is it? ...how did you determine the fuse size?....but may not protect the Engel which is drawing around 2.7 to 3 amps running and briefly more for a nano second at start up.

A 20 amp in line fuse (placed as close as possible to the power / battery source) may still be intact but your Engel stuffed if there is a problem at its end. You would be safer ensuring the Engel is protected by a fuse of the correct size to protect it even though the cable and fuse delivering its power may be of a larger size than it requires.

I have always run a good size cable ( cable length and required current draw determines this, there are charts available), protected that with a fuse at the source and then protected the individual appliances at the other end by their own correctly sized fuse. Usually broken down to a fuse bank at the back of the vehicle with individual leads to whatever I am wanting to run.

In your case you can do this simply by retaining the Engel in line fuse on its cord and just change the male cig plug to match the plug on the end of the cable you have run. OR set up a fuse bank if you want run more than the Engel...lights or whatever OR if you are only going to run the Engel replace the 20 amp at the battrey end with the correctly sized fuse for the Engel...no more than a 10 and most likely a 5 will do

There will always be someone on this forum with other ideas...but I am great believer in fuses at both ends, matched to the expected draw, not an over kill size... they blow for a reason...easy to change a fuse and investigate the problem than suffer burnt out wiring, appliances or worse still a vehicle fire.

Engel recomend that the thermal fuse only need to be used if using the cigarette lighter plug. It is there because if the heat that can build up in the connection in ciggie sockets. Otherwise at nearly $10 a fuse, if your using any other plug (such as engel 2 pin plug, arrid, hella, merit etc etc etc etc) a standard 10A inline fuse is sufficient

Sonny,

The very first thing I did with the Engel lead was to cut the cigarette plug off the end of the cable and replace it with a merit plug. Like you, I have Merit sockets in the rear of the vehicle and you are doing a wise thing indeed.

As long as you have an inline fuse at the battery end to protect against a dead short everything will be OK.

Your engel is protected by the 10amp blade fuse that sits in its back panel of the fridge.
Your 20amp fuse at the battery will protect the wiring to the fridge against short circuit or overloading.
The thermal fuse can be ditched when you ditch the plug. I have cut the engel lead at the required length for my truck, and installed male/female plugs so I can still run it from a cig socket in another vehicle. I use a compact inline plug thats used in R/C cars called Deans Ultraplug. I actually use these for all my 12volt stuff. They never come apart in the rough stuff.

the service agent here in SA told me to just fit a standard 10 amp fuse
i'll get around to replacing the alfoil one day