Hello everyone! I have been reading this forum for a week or so, and decided to finally register. First of all, my name is Mike, and I'm from the far south suburbs of Chicago. I am 28 and have dreamt for many years of one day owning a kegerator. The time has finally come where I am going to attempt to build my own.
My story goes that my grandparents had their original General Electric refrigerator in their basement that they purchased in 1953. It was a spare fridge and just kept extra food and drinks cold at parties. Then last September their basement flooded. 4 feet of water destroyed almost everything, their washer, their dryer, a lot of furniture, etc.
Once everything had dried out they surveyed the damage. The fridge turned on and you could hear the compressor go, but it didnt get cold. As old as it was, they didnt want to spend money to get it fixed, so they were going to throw it away, so I offered to take it off their hands. It sat in my garage since last Oct through just recently when I looked into getting it fixed. Someone suggested just giving it a good cleaning and seeing if it needed to be recharged. I cleaned the back out and just plugged it in and whaddya know, it works! I've had it running 4 days straight now to make sure it stays cold and so far so good.
So anyway, heres how it looks now. Its a bit dirty, but overall in good shape. The pictures actually make it look worse than does in person, but here ya go:
My plan is to get one of the Micromatic door kits and get it setup for a single keg. I will be the only one mainly using it (I live alone), so a 5 lb CO2 bottle should suffice.
I want to do some body work to it and clean up the chrome, and sand and repaint it red. Im not sure how good I can get the chrome to be, but I think it will look pretty sweet red. I might also put some casters on the bottom of it so I can move it around. This puppy is HEAVY!! Its all metal, unlike modern refrigerators that are almost entirely plastic. I might even go as far as doing some lighting mods to it. Not sure yet.
Anyway, if anyone has any advice for a first timer, and someone jumping into such an old unit, let me have it! I hope to have the thing done by my birthday which is in September. I will keep everyone updated!