[mercutio87]

Hello,
I recently built a kegerator, and it seems to be running pretty well, as far as keeping the beer cold and everything working. I used a sanyo 4.4 cu ft mini fridge, which works well once I bent the freezer tray down.
My problem is that it seems like bending the freezer tray disrupts the fridge's cooling ability, because its always running.
I don't really care about the stock thermostat not working properly, because I already got an external STC-1000 temperature controller.
(Even before I installed it, I was able to turn the stock thermostat down to "min" and get to 40 degrees.)

It seems like the freezer tray is intended to be frosted over in order to properly/efficiently work. It seems that normally the stock fridge achieves this by the plastic trays below the evaporator tray and the freezer cover, but these were removed to fit the keg.
On my kegerator, the evaporator tray has nothing to shield it. It gets really cold, frosts over a little bit, then the evaporator turns off when it hits the right temp, and all the frost melts. This also causes a lot of water to drip down to the bottom of the fridge, and the drain hole can sometimes gets frozen over and does not drain.
bottom line: I really don't want to spend an extra $200/month to power the fridge. (i dont know how much it actually is)

I've seen many posts talking about installing/building an external temperature controller, but I haven't seen anything about making a cover for the bent evaporator tray. I would think it would shield the rest of the fridge from the freezing temps of the evaporator tray, and also allow the evaporator tray to freeze over and work more efficiently. (Just a guess)

Has anyone tried installing one?
If so, did it affect the ability to store kegs/Co2 tank in the fridge?


I'm new to this forum, so please forgive me for any mistakes I make posting.