Hard wire or 12V plug for Refrigerator wiring

[WandereR]

Those of you with a refrigerator in your truck, did you hard wire or just plug the fridge into a 12V plug (cigarette lighter). Any benefits to hard wiring?

 

[smritte]

Depending on size of fridge, most accessory ports (lighter ports) cant handle the power flow a bigger fridge needs. They will "work" but not properly. Then there's the issue with the plug itself. Most will walk out of the port on rough roads.

Both of my vehicles are hardwired with Anderson plugs. My trailer is the same. My vehicle fridge is a 30 qt and my trailer is a 60 chest style. In my Tacoma, I noticed the 30 qt wasn't happy even though the port was rated high enough. When I pulled my dash apart is when I saw the 20 gauge wiring to the port. Not sure where the rating came from.
If you have a Japanese vehicle, the ports turn off with the key. American can either stay on or power off. My TJ and cruiser both had 14 gauge wire. Still in my opinion, isn't big enough.

I went through a pretty good learning curve with the "cigarette lighter" plugs falling out while driving. That's why I started using Anderson plugs.
I do have people comment, theirs works fine on the stock port. I prefer hardwire.

 

[James Hunt]

Do you plan on moving the fridge at all in the future? If so, I would at least have some sort of connectors being used that you can quick disconnect.

 

[Setton]

Yep, my thoughts as well, if you plan on moving it, keep it easy. Hard wiring will make a mess of things.