PRACTICAL
Out with the old
W
e measured
incredibly carefully,
not just the overall
internal geometry of the
space the fridge would
have to fit but even down
to the battening that
strengthened the corners.
Length, breadth, height
and every obstacle was
measured, photographed
and sketched, as was theadjoining locker where we
thought we might install a
remote refrigeration unit.
We knew from the start
that if we had to take it out
through the top the aperture
wasn’t big enough, and
since the top of the locker
was glued and screwed it
would have to be cut off.
But it wasn’t until we started
pulling it forward that werealised the fridge door and
the door of the gash locker
opposite would both have
to be removed to make
sufficient room. This is
where it slowly dawned
on us that measuring the
volume of the locker was
not the whole story. Would
we even get the old fridge
out of the boat, let alone
the new fridge into it?The first problem: it was impossible to get to
the heads of the captive bolts under the fridge
that held the runners onto which the fridge was
screwed. They protruded so much that we
thought at first we wouldn’t be able to lift the
fridge clear of them to extract it. In the end
I tried a locknut and screwed them downwards,
and this trick worked just well enough for us
to get the fridge out.
The wiring was also difficult to get to. We
had to detach both 12V and mains wiring at
arm’s length down at the bottom of the locker.
With all the doors, hinges, saloon table and
even the domestic radio removed there was
just enough room to manoeuvre. And this
was when we found out how heavy and
unbalanced old-style fridges are.
With the fridge out of the way I could get
to the offending captive bolts and literally
hack them out of the baseplate. I filled the
holes with chopped strand filler. It was
pretty obvious now that when the boat
was built the bolts came first, then the
fridge, then the locker top was glued and
screwed in place. Design for maintenance
was obviously a foreign concept to the
builders in 1992. I hope modern boat
designers have embraced it now.In with the new
1
The first thing that had to happen was
removal of the lip at the bottom of the
locker. A multi-saw was the perfect tool for this,
cutting cleanly level with the locker floor. This is
where all that measuring paid off, as it was the
only modification to the locker we had to make.4
Now it really got tight. The bottom door
hinge was a bar with a pintle at its end
screwed upwards into the base. We couldn’t
fit it once the fridge was in position and it
protruded too much to be fitted before we
carried the fridge into the saloon. In the end we
had to balance the whole thing like this while
the hinge itself protruded into the gash locker
and I got underneath with a screwdriver.8
Finally, ignoring the original method of
fixing, we anchored the fridge with two
sturdy battens which would also be responsible
for supporting the settee and keeping people’s
weight off the fridge structure itself...Lower hinge pintle