Broken cooling line in mini fridge...

Has anyone ever broken the cooling line on the inside of a mini fridge while bending the freezer tray part back? Because I just did. It kinked a little, and then cracked a little, and then sprayed a little. I quickly covered the hole with a ton of quick sealing silicone but I'm not sure if it's gonna hold.

Has anyone else done this and if so what did you do to fix it? I hope it's not doomed. I just bought that fridge and had it at my house less then 15 min before I broke it.

It is doomed unless you can get a refer guy to repair and recharge it.

Where are you?

That's exactly what I DIDN'T want to hear. I'm in Birmingham AL. I paid 80 for the fridge so I bet it would be cheaper to replace then to repair it...

Too far. If you were closer, I'd fix it for you. It's not all that difficult but requires some special tools to get it right. You might want to ask around and see if you can get lucky.

So it's defiantly broken.

Any ideas on what to do with a broken mini fridge? I don't want to just trash it. I spent hard earned money on it and didn't have it for 20 min before I destroyed it.
I feel like there has to be something it's still good for... Right?

Stand for your bottling bucket??

Sorry to hear the bad news. Same thing happened to me when drilling a freezer I just scored from craigslist. $100 in the toilet, plus the expense of buying a new freezer.
The labor from a repair person is almost always more than the cost of a new one, unless you have a refrigerant friend. I could go on about how cheap imports distort our value of labor etc. but I'll stop here.

I did the same thing while ripping the guts out of my fridge. I got some coolant and an attachment schrader valve at wally world and got it back up and running. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/did-i-just-ruin-fridge-202271/

Trouble-Brewing said:

I did the same thing while ripping the guts out of my fridge. I got some coolant and an attachment schrader valve at wally world and got it back up and running. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/did-i-just-ruin-fridge-202271/

Click to expand...

Excellent advice right there. I had forgotten that you can buy a canister of 134A most anywhere. (Auto parts stores have it as well along with the charge line.)

I have a refrigerator in my basement that worked awesome until I tried to do the same thing. I've been planning to get a second refrigerator identical to it, cut out the left wall of one fridge, and the right wall of the other, and bolt them together. So it would be a double-door mini fridge, powered by one fridge. I think a fan on the inside would also be necessary, but I think it would work great for lagering.