Materials:

1 Oster 5.0 c.f. refrigerator: Oster at Best Buy This is a great frig to use as it does not have the freezer compartment and you will still have usable door space when you are done for bottles.

1 Kegerator conversion kit: Keg Kit from Keg Connection

4 feet of 7/8 O.D. plastic tubing from your local home store

1 small plastic food storage container with lid

1 computer type 12 volt fan

1 12 volt A/C to D/C converter

wire nuts

1 cheap extension cord

9 1/4" x 9 1/4" piece of 1/4" plywood

Aluminum tape

Tools:

Drill

Screwdriver (phillips and flat)

wire cutters

plyers

Hole saw (drill bit type used to make door knob holes in new doors)

drill bits

Knife

Here is the refrigerator and parts kit ready to go

Here are the parts that you will not need. I found that you can keep the top 2 door shelf pieces but the door will be a tight fit and might pop open. I chose to remove them all and later will build a "flat" piece to put in the door channels so that things don't fall off the shelves.

I also chose to lose the light in the frig. You could keep the light and engineer a solution to make it work if you were so inclined, but I did not feel it was worth the extra effort. The effort would involve spacing it properly above its original location so that closing the door still activated the shutoff switch and also wiring another solution for the air box power supply.

So let's drill the hole for the tower! I used the dead-center of the top plastic piece since Oster nicely gave us a "dimple" to locate it. We will drill the hole all the way through the frig top and into the frig before removing the top piece from the unit.

Drill a pilot hole first.

Then use the hole saw and drill all the way through. I had to stop about 1/2 way since my hole saw was not deep enough to do it all in one pass. I cleared out the insulation about 1/2 way through.

Clean up the hole with a chisel.

Once done, I wrapped the inside of the hole with aluminum tape to help with insulation shedding. Aluminum tape holds up nicely in all "weather" conditions and forms to whatever shape you have.

Now set you tower on top and mark and drill the 4 screw holes. The top of my tower comes off which allowed me to look down and make sure the hole was centered.

Now remove the top to install the 1/4" plywood backing plate.

To remove the top piece, remove the three screws in the back, lift up slightly on the back and push it forward.

We will remove the center 9 squares for the piece of plywood. The hole is 9 1/4" x 9 1/4". Do not break out the plastic pieces until after you drill the hole as these will provide drilling support. You will notice that I have gone slightly out of order on the pictures and steps, in retrospect, you do not need to remove the top until after the tower holes are drilled out. I removed the top first but had to put it back on the do the drilling so this is a time saver. Also in retrospect, you could have removed the top, installed the plywood, reinstalled the top, and done one drilling for all the holes at once.

Break out the plastic strips now with a pair of plyers. Clean up the hole and the plastic strip lines with a chissel.

Cut your plywood and install - don't permanently attach at this stage to the top.

Now cut your hole in the plywood with the same hole saw used for the top of the frig. However, remove the centering drill bit so that you don't drill off center. The hole in the plastic top will be your guide. I put the top back on the frige before drilling.

Now remove the plastic top and plywood, I cleaned it up a bit with the random orbit sander. Then apply silicone caulk and install.

You can now permanently attach the tower.

Now we'll work on relocating the thermostat. First unscrew the existing housing. There are two screws, one is behind the light bulb so remove that and the other is under the white thermostat pointer. You can pry it out with your fingernail.

You need to tap into the light power source for our airbox A/C to D/C converter. This is pretty easy but if you are at all concerned about electric work, have someone else do the work! It is 110 volt!

I tapped into the white lead going to the bulb and the red lead coming off the switch in the back. By keeping the switch in the loop, you have the ability to shut off the fan if you desire by taping the switch in the closed position.

You need to remove all the wires from the thermostat housing in order to relocate the housing at the top of the frig. They are all on spade connectors so nothing needs to be cut at this time. Do NOT remove the thermostat temperature lead/wire as this will permanently break the thermostat!

Drill 2 holes in the side of the housing, one towards the front and one towards the back, and push the all wires accept the white one through these holes and reconnect them. The red wire goes through the the one towards the front of the frig.

Get your cheap extension cord and cut it off so that you have about 2 feet on the end with the outlet, discard the other end. Cut off the lead ends of the white and red wires from the thermostat housing and use a wire nut to connect the extension segment. Polarity does not matter. Ignore the spade connectors that you see in the picture, that was a bad idea and I cut them off in favor of wire nuts. I used an old A/C to D/C power converter that I had laying around. Cut off the connector end and hardwire it to the 12 volt computer fan using wire nuts. Polarity did matter and it would not work if connected wrong, just try each way and whatever way makes the fan spin is correct.

I used aluminum tape here to seal the old holes and to tie everything up.

I threw caution to the wind and just screwed the original screw that came with the thermostat back into the side of the frig in the new location to reattach the thermostat housing (the hole under the thermostat pointer). It is self-tapping and with just a little pressure it will get through the side of the frig. It has plenty of bit to hold the housing and I did not put the front screw back in.

Make sure you set the housing back far enough into the frig that the door closing does NOT activate the switch or your fan will shut off when you shut the door.

The box is simple. I used a Glad food container, attached the fan to one end using a small hole saw for the input hole and just made a ragged hole with a knife on the other for the 7/8" tubing to go into. Sloppiness in this step is not a big deal since you only need a little bit of air flow up the tubing to keep the tower cool.

I taped the wires to the bottom inside the box with aluminum tape.

The box is just taped onto the shelf so that it doesn't move - again with aluminum tape. You can see the 12 volt adapter on the right.

I put the tubing in the tower from the top down as it was easier. I got just enough tubing to be about an inch from the top of the tower. With the fan running, there is plenty of air flow to fead the tower. Pull it up a bit, cut it, and push it back to the proper height.

The finished frig! After a few hours, you can feel how cold the tower is! Very nice! Everything fits great and you still have door space for bottles and such.