I recieved my free fridge today Thanks to bogomip for the heads up about the offer at Viking Direct. Ok so first up here are some pictures of what it looks like, starting with a full frontal Ofcourse you know which pic comes next...the spread It can hold a total of 6 normal size cans (330ml) Here it is from the left... And from the right... The top, which has a cool handle for carrying it to your car - yes you get a car adapter with it And finally we move to the back of the fridge, where you can see that it has a 80mm fan... A few problems that I have with the fridge : (1) It's very noisy (2) The paintwork is pretty bad, I am considering sanding it down and vinyl dying it black but I am not sure about this - what are your opinions? (3) The little window in the front looks useless to me, I have two ideas on what to do about this... (3a) Fit a temparature LCD in there, OR (3b) Install some lighting in the fridge. This fridge is switchable from cold to warm so I was thinking having a few red and blue LED's in there that would change colour depending on the mode of the fridge? Right well, ideas are all talk so let the modding begin : Back panel removed, we can see a large heatsink and a standard 80mm fan. Heatsink removed The heatsink and everything cleaned and ready for application of Artic Silver 3 thermal paste, you can also see that the area of contact on the heatsink has been lapped Here is where the switch is to select between cool and warm operations, the label has been removed so I can get the screws off but you can see the red and green LED's. And here is the PCB unscrewed, it's an out of focus pic I know but you can just about make out the lettering blue where the green LED is, don't need to ask me twice to change that LED Here is another pic of the PCB with the fan wires and green LED taken off I will be going to Maplin tomorrow to purchase a 120mm fan, and a blue casing 3mm blue LED Updates to follow when I have those items...
hmmm... full frontal, spread, and no "spread with cylindrical objects inside"? That's what I was lookin for.... anyone who wants it left to the imagination is only saying that cause they haven't seen it I'm hopin to see some eerie blue or red glows from inside - will wait to see what you decide mate!
Mine arrived yesterday! Not the coldest thing in the world, the ones that aria.co.uk sell seem to get a little colder and reach their minimum temp slightly quicker. All in all though, not bad for a freebie at all! Looking forward to seeing your mods, chap
Unfortunately, it was just a temporary special offer where you had to spend at least £1, and you'd get a free mini-fridge. I'm sure you could probably get one a nicer one for $40 at a department store or something.. actually... maybe $45. I have no idea what the current exchange rate is
I don't think the paintwork is that bad, it could atleast wait till after you do the major modifications. My fridge is pretty quiet, all i can hear is some vibration and a little air noise that can be solved with just cutting out the rear fan hole. I was also thinking about a lcd or that lighting. I personally think that a lcd would be better as the window is so small anyway.
Yea LCD or Bigger window If you put an LCD in then you'd have to make sure it does not get cold itself.
Actually after a bit of modding i've found that the fan makes an annoying noise but an evercool will solve that.
blue for cold led red for hot led instead of and lcd do a VFD in the useless hole do a wireless remote to switch from cold to hot do the black dye if you get tired of it do a mini itx box from it like the toaser project
Why not both? 9" CC in the top (just make sure its sealed else it'll die cos of the condensation) and an LCDTemp fitted into the front of the door!
Is there a peltier inside the fridge? I am wondering because my parents have a mini fridge/warmer for the car, and it can be set to heat or cool, and I've always wondered how it heats things up using only a fan. I think you should get some Lazer LEDs from Sunbeam and light the fridge up. With LEDs you don't have to worry about condensation or heat coming from the source of light. I think you should keep the window. You could mount an LCD below or over the window. This will make it look like a more expensive fridge. Maybe you can add a fan control for it, to control the speed of the fan (it it doesn't have that already). You can do that together with a temperature sensing circuit, and you can have the fan go faster when the fridge heats up, to keep the desired temperature. And mod it to fit bottles.
