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We used to cool our fridge at home on a hook-up, but now it's in storage it's impossible.  When we pack the fridge we make sure everything going in is as cool as possible, and take a couple of litre packs of orange juice, which we've previously frozen, plus a bottle of milk which has been frozen.  This helps keep the fridge temperature down, and we've never had a problem with food spoiling, even in very hot temperatures when travelling down through France.  

A typical journey, for us,  involves leaving home Friday mid-afternoon, and probably the next time we hook-up will be Saturday evening around 5.00 pm.  Food is fine, even though the fridge will have been opened to get food out for breakfast, a mid-morning coffee with milk (sometimes not thawed even after twelve hours), and lunchtime salad and meats.  In the meantime the fridge is on 12v whilst we're travelling to Dover, off during the ferry crossing, on again for perhaps an hour whilst we travel down to an overnight stop (with no hook-up) and then on 12v again for Saturday, from about 8.00 am.

I can't imagine that food spoiling would be a problem in this country if you did something similar.

Our caravan fridge is 12v only.

It is a Waeco 50L compressor fridge and it gets down to temperature in 10 minutes.

Its average consumption on 12v is 40 watts.

I do not doubt you figures but 120 watts on 12v seems awfully high to me.

Aha, sorry, I misread your letter and I may be talking through a hole in my hat, but my take on this is;- .

On 12v you will be drawing 10A but on 230v you will only be drawing about 0.5A.

I would imagine that to get your fridge down to temp would require more amps than the engine alternator can give you and so the fridge is only capable of "ticking over" while on 12v.

Whereas, on 230v it can draw more amps to get it down to temp and then go into tick over.

If the car or caravan are pre 1999 the 12S plug earth is only pin 3 white. In 1999 pin 7 black was also earthed. This will dramatically reduce voltage drop and improve fridge performance on 12V.

Pin 7 was previously unused so you could have the mod carried out.

 To stop the pin 7 from overheating/or melting, connect pin 6 and pin 2 together and pin 7 and pin 5 together on the 12s socket on the caravan, this gives you 2 live feeds and 2 earths for the fridge, make sure you use heavy enough wire for the connections, iv,e done this for the last 5 years and no problems with pin 7 melting.