Frunk as a camping ice cooler - test prior to a family Summer road trip.

[21st Century Pony]

If you added one, it needs to be strapped down.

You are right Rick. My Modern Spare tire and jack are strapped down to the four cargo rings in the trunk, something necessary for safety. You can see the black straps in this picture - next to the two orange wheel chocks and under the folded orange safety cone.

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[SpaceEVDriver]

I understand about the plug-in cooler and the trunk power point.

Having survived one or two cross-continent trips as a boy (there were four of us kids in the 1968 station wagon) and as an adult, I am now all about packing by function, rather than heaving everything + everything we might buy into one space in the car.

We might choose to / be forced by weather to sleep in the car. We might need to get at the spare tire and the jack... and I don't want to be unpacking three layers of trunk stuff just to function.

BTW, I appreciate the several suggestions here to buy an electric cooler... and maybe I would, were this car a GMC Yukon. It's a small suv and I prefer to keep flexibility with the trunk space.

I mean, what if we buy two gigantic Stetsons in Cody Wyoming, to go to Cassie's Steak House for grub and Western dancing (a repeat for me and an eye-opener for my European grand-nephew I'm certain)? Where would them Stetsons go later? Into the frunk? That would be a sacriledge and we might not make it out of town haha.

I have a particular approach that I know wouldn't work for many people, and yours sounds like it works for you.

One thing you may want to look at (I know you've already spent money, so it's probably too late) is a powered cooler bag. These are thermo-electric (peltier) and so only cool to no better than about 40 degrees F below ambient (I wouldn't trust them to better than 30 below ambient), so they're not ideal once the ambient (or under-hood) temperatures rise above 75 or so, but they do supplement ice quite well. You would need to provide 12V power to the frunk (yes, it's already there, but you may want it to be switched).


Example: https://www.koolatron.com/products/d25-cooler-bag-25l

 

[21st Century Pony]

I have a particular approach that I know wouldn't work for many people, and yours sounds like it works for you.

One thing you may want to look at (I know you've already spent money, so it's probably too late) is a powered cooler bag. These are thermo-electric (piezo) and so only cool to no better than about 40 degrees F below ambient (I wouldn't trust them to better than 30 below ambient), so they're not ideal once the ambient (or under-hood) temperatures rise above 75 or so, but they do supplement ice quite well. You would need to provide 12V power to the frunk (yes, it's already there, but you may want it to be switched).


Example: https://www.koolatron.com/products/d25-cooler-bag-25l

Hey thanks... didn't know this was a thing.

That's what I like about this forum for a still very new car model... the ability to easily pick up knowledge from others sharing theirs. I have learned a ton from fellow posters over the past year.

 

[21st Century Pony]

I have a particular approach that I know wouldn't work for many people, and yours sounds like it works for you.

One thing you may want to look at (I know you've already spent money, so it's probably too late) is a powered cooler bag. These are thermo-electric (piezo) and so only cool to no better than about 40 degrees F below ambient (I wouldn't trust them to better than 30 below ambient), so they're not ideal once the ambient (or under-hood) temperatures rise above 75 or so, but they do supplement ice quite well. You would need to provide 12V power to the frunk (yes, it's already there, but you may want it to be switched).


Example: https://www.koolatron.com/products/d25-cooler-bag-25l

The problem (not really a problem, but a feature) of our frunks is that they are about 36 inches long side-to-side, 14+ inches tall but only 9.5 inches wide front-to-back, measured across their flat bottom..

Their width and their height are good for quite a bit of flexibility in usage and packing, but that narrow bottom is a limiting factor.

I'm discounting the frunk's front slope except for odds and ends.

BUT our frunks are still much, much more useful than the shallow frunk in Sonny Boy's 202 Audi E-Tron he lucked into as a used car. His frunk is about good only to hold a gym bag.

The attraction of that REI folding bag cooler is that its bottom, when open, fits exactly into our frunk's bottom, and its height is also perfect. Plus with the upcoming sale and the REI member discount, the're at a great price. Otherwise I would have kept McGyvering.

Maybe if (IF) our frunks were just a bit deeper so they'd contain the Modern Spare wheel... but they're not.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

The problem (not really a problem, but a feature) of our frunks is that they are about 36 inches long side-to-side, 14+ inches tall but only 9.5 inches wide front-to-back, measured across their flat bottom..

Their width and their height are good for quite a bit of flexibility in usage and packing, but that narrow bottom is a limiting factor.

I'm discounting the frunk's front slope except for odds and ends.

BUT our frunks are still much, much more useful than the shallow frunk in Sonny Boy's 202 Audi E-Tron he lucked into as a used car. His frunk is about good only to hold a gym bag.

The attraction of that REI folding bag cooler is that its bottom, when open, fits exactly into our frunk's bottom, and its height is also perfect. Plus with the upcoming sale and the REI member discount, the're at a great price. Otherwise I would have kept McGyvering.

Maybe if (IF) our frunks were just a bit deeper so they'd contain the Modern Spare wheel... but they're not.

I never bothered to gather the dimensions--just packed it. We keep all of our emergency gear (no spare tire) in the frunk. Haven't looked at a cooler of any sort; it always seemed warm in there after stopping from a trip so I never considered it. However, I'm planning a trip to the far reaches of northern CA later this year to visit a gearhead sibling and thought I'd put a couple bags of ice and an 8-pack of V8s in the frunk for when he wants to take a look under the hood.

 

[21st Century Pony]

I never bothered to gather the dimensions--just packed it. We keep all of our emergency gear (no spare tire) in the frunk. Haven't looked at a cooler of any sort; it always seemed warm in there after stopping from a trip so I never considered it. However, I'm planning a trip to the far reaches of northern CA later this year to visit a gearhead sibling and thought I'd put a couple bags of ice and an 8-pack of V8s in the frunk for when he wants to take a look under the hood.

What if you make it a 16-pack?

 

[JohnFoxeSheets]

Haven't car camped in decades, but another technique to make your cooler stay cool longer is to freeze pre-made food in advance and use the food itself as ice. We did this with chili once and had it for dinner on the second night. That said, that was one fragrant night in a small tent.

🫢

 

[dmastro]

If with the cooler bags the ice holds for 2 - 3 days, that opens up many possibilities during trips, for example making fresh sandwiches to eat while charging and using our SodaStream for continual and super-cheap cold soda while driving.

Remember that my passenger will be a super-hungry 14-year old boy.

Now I'm wondering if you could run a tap into the cabin

 

[21st Century Pony]

Now I'm wondering if you could run a tap into the cabin

Uuuu... continuous chillled Mountain Dew

 

[mikeandrie]

Does the frunk get hot on RWDs too, or only the AWDs?

 

[21st Century Pony]

Final frunk cooler test - my results with two REI appropriately sized cooler bags full of ice and some 20 pounds of loose ice around these bags on their outside since 5 p.m. on Sunday:

- The loose outer ice had all melted by Monday morning. I'm sure it had helped to evapo-cool the material of the cooler bags as it melted. See pic #1.
- Both REI cooler bags remained cool to the touch in their insides for about 71 hours until 4 p.m. today, Wednesday.
- I checked the cooler bags' ice levels once a day, i.e. on Monday (see pic #1) , Tuesday, Wednesday early morning (See pic #2) and Wednesday around 4 p.m. I also emptied water from one bag every day and left the other bag untouched as its ice melted, to compare relative melting speeds. By 4 p.m. today, there was not much ice left in one bag... maybe two cups, while the other bag was simply full of still-cold water with no ice cubes. See pic #3.

This satisfies me that I can count on ice keeping liquids and selected solid food appropriately cold for 2, possibly three full days, which is good enough for me. Plus, we now have the option of using only one bag or both, depending on our plans during trips.

And this result came in temps of low 80s to high 70s during the day, despite the blast furnace warm radiator air flowing around the frunk when I drive the car. To test the system, I had driven at least 100 miles every day of the test, and on Tuesday afternoon, just to stress things a bit more, I crawled around the Wash DC Beltway in late afternoon stop-&-go traffic.

For those interested, these cooler bags from REI are pictured in a post above along with their tags. I hear they will be on sale at REI this Friday.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

Great experiment. And you don't have to count on it staying cold for a full 2 or 3 days while you're traveling... Many of your charging stops will be where you can resupply with (water) ice or even "dry ice."

 

[21st Century Pony]

Great experiment. And you don't have to count on it staying cold for a full 2 or 3 days while you're traveling... Many of your charging stops will be where you can resupply with (water) ice or even "dry ice."

Yeah the two+ day extent of coldness would play well if we drive into a remote National Park or National Forest site, camp the night then the next morning go hiking someplace rugged, overnight, and get back to the car still parked at a primitive site the following evening.

 

[Mrn]

This fits surprisingly well with room left over for other items that don't require cooling:

 

[JohnFoxeSheets]

As Martin promised, the REI foldable cooler is now on sale.

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