Sanyo 4912 Kegerator Conversion

**John Beere** · 01-14-2007, 05:48 AM

I know this has been covered by many but I'm doing a few things different that I haven't seen anyone else do (for better or worse) - so I thought I share...

First thing I did after throughly testing the fridge was take the inside of the door off to make more room. The screws are under the rubber seal and there are a LOT of them. There are also two different type screws so be careful to note which screws come out of which holes. Here is the plastic door insert after removing the rubber seal:

I then noted which side of the insert was the top and pulled out the dremel tool. From the back side of the insert, I began cutting the plastic right at the ridge all the way around and ended up with this:

I then cleaned it up a little, reinstalled the rubber seal, and screwed it all back together.

**John Beere** · 01-14-2007, 05:57 AM

The next thing I did was to see how cold the fridge would go if I just turned it on "maximum". I don't know exactly how cold it will go b/c I stopped it at 26 degrees... this was good news because if "maximum" wouldn't go to at least freezing I was going to have to bypass the thermostat.

I then wired up a Ranco thermostat to the unit and mounted it in the rear next to the compressor.

By setting the fridge to "maximum" I can now completely control the temperature of the fridge all the way down to freezing if I want...

For the temperature probe, I did the exact same thing as my walk-in cooler and used a White Labs yeast container filled with the goop from a freezer pack. I pushed the probe through the drain plug into the fridge and mounted it at the very top as near to the front as I could. It is attached with two heavy zip ties.

Thats as far as I've gotten so far as my tower hasn't arrived yet... so it will be a few days before I get to drilling out the top.

**John Beere** · 01-14-2007, 06:10 AM

A caveat to cutting the door out like I've done is that the light switch will not be depressed when the door is closed so the light will always be on. My solution was to just remove the bulb...

**John Beere** · 01-16-2007, 03:37 PM

It seems Orpheus has just posted similar steps to add a tower to this same fridge - so to keep from being redundant on those steps, Click Here: http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/sanyo-4912-kegerator-conversion-19762/

aekdbbop · 01-16-2007, 04:58 PM

nice man, i did the same with the door, only a little more crazy like. But after i was done ripping it up, i covered the insulation with black duct tape.. it was an easy thing to do that made it look a little nicer.

aekdbbop · 01-16-2007, 05:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by John Beere

A caveat to cutting the door out like I've done is that the light switch will not be depressed when the door is closed so the light will always be on. My solution was to just remove the bulb...

ha i didnt even think about the bulb... it has been on for 4 days now.. oops.. yeah i just unscrewed it a little. when i need it to see, i can just turn it a bit to make it come back on...

**John Beere** · 01-28-2007, 05:07 AM

I finally got around to finishing up my kegerator. I bought a taprite dual regulator (model #5754-wmhp-tay) off ebay. I quickly fashioned a mounting plate for it out of a piece of scrap metal and bent the metal so it would stand out about a 1/2".

**John Beere** · 01-28-2007, 05:08 AM

I took the top two screws out of the cold plate in the back of the fridge and mounted the regulator to it.

Here it is hooked up to my 5 lb tank.

And finally, with the two kegs.

I'm dry running everything for tonight to check for leaks and hope to hook it up for the first time tomorrow!

Tony · 01-28-2007, 03:55 PM

Looks great!

I have the same fridge, and back when I made mine, I removed the inner door of mine as well to make more room. I simply removed the gasket, then removed the door, then replaced the gasket. No plexiglass or anything, as since I figured the door is insulated enough, and I keep steady temps inside still.

I ran into the same problem concerning the light. I noticed that the inner door, of course, was what depressed the pin switch for the light. What I did was disassemble the control box, and unplugged and removed the switch. Different method, same results.

My curious question for everyone who has one of these, is what dial setting are you all having to set yours to, to get proper temps? I notice John Beere's is set to max to test, but have heard others having to set it the same for regular serving temps. I have mine set to near 3. If I set it to exactly 3 it gets down to 38. If I set it between 3 and 4, it gets down to 32. If i set it at 4 or more, it gets below 25.

Just wondering if I have a odd ball.

**John Beere** · 01-28-2007, 04:51 PM

If you look back to post #2 you'll see that I added a Ranco temperature controller to the fridge to exactly regulate the temperature.

I got the fridge down to 26 degrees when I tested the max setting. Not sure how much colder it would have gone but it was still running when I stopped the test.