Best performance from freezer with Dixell programmable tstat?

[scotte]

Our 12VDC freezer is an air cooled model by Technautics (Coastal 12 I believe) with a very nice Dixell XR120C programmable thermostat. It's working great, after figuring out why the freezer was running all the time - PO had for some reason disconnected the fancy thermostat and jumpered the terminal block so the compressor would run 100% when powered!

I was wondering if anyone else with a somewhat similar system has figured out what works best for them in programming the XR120C or similar. I reset most of the parameters to the defaults (they were set to some pretty nonsensical values), with a set point of 5 degrees Fahrenheit / differential 2.

I'm really impressed with the Dixell thermostat, it's pretty much impossible to figure out without the manual, but manuals are fortunately readily available online.