Vendo 90 - Donor deck with lines on opposite side

[BrianB]

My $75.00 V90 that I picked up earlier this year had been sitting waiting for a working refrigeration system to be installed to get her back up and running. Well, after asking around here and keeping an eye on the web, I was unable to find a deck that would fit.

On a V90, the copper lines going to/from the compressor/condenser to the evaporator are located on the left hand side. The door and the main body are both configured for it to fit that way and only that way.

Big thanks to Josh, he donated a working deck that he got out of a transitional Vendorlator 81 to aid me in my adventure! The only problem is the location of the lines, they are on the right hand side.

After about 1 or 2 hours of checking, double-checking, putting the deck in at every weird angle, I came to the conclusion that you cannot install this deck and get the lines to fit like the original deck configuration.

No amount of bending would get you there either. There is either not enough physical copper or things would be in the way. The only way to get it to fit with the lines on left would be to "re-plumb" the deck. Meaning, evacuate the refrigerant, cut out old lines, bend and install new lines, pump it down and let it sit overnight to see if holds a vacuum and then fill it up and test.

Instead of all of that, I decided to see if it would fit another way. The only criteria that I had was functionallity. It had to fit so that the door could be closed without pressing on anything, the condenser/compressor had to have access to cool air and the evaporator needed to be able to pump out cool air with no obstructions or affecting the vending shelves.

I removed the old deck, saved what was good, tossed what was bad. I was able to salvage the original wiring harness plug that connects the main door to the refrigeration deck which helped out alot. Did a little soldering and heat shrinking and had the deck installed and ready to go in a jiff. I filled it up with soda pop and fire her up! It worked like a champ and held temp quite well for having crappy door seals.

Here's what I came up with:

[Pat Pixley]

Hey Brian, look good glad that worked out, hey  one thing I did notice that may help
 you know how the condensor should be up against the back wall to force the cold air up and with your you can't because of the lines being to short  could you get a small peice
of sheet metel and put it on the back of condensor to force the air up instead of it going out and hiting the side wall  .  other than that great job   


Pat

[loman4ec]

Brian,

I am glad that deck got to be used again! Good work on the fabricating. I once had to install a dixie narco system in a V56 and the lines were on the wrong side. Luckily I was able to bend them around to get it to work. It worked out in the long run. Here is the one I did. I was lucky enough to have a ton of copper line to work with.