Edgestar conversion mistake

[goodrica]

I think I made a big mistake... I purchased an edgestar conversation keg - with the tower hole already created, however I also bought at a later date a Krome Dispense C501 Beer tower:
http://kromedispense.com/krome_bt.htm#

The Krome tower is Pre-fitted with 3/16" IDx5' long NSF and comes with screws. Anyway, the Edgestar is some sort of a screw top, and I guess I should have just bought their conversation kit. I guess my question is, should I just bite the bullet sell the tower because it will be a pain in the butt to get on there, or am I overthinking this and while it's a bit of a pain to drill a few holes and screw it in, it's probably a better tower?

I just don't want to crack or screw up my new kegerator.

Cheers.

 

[day_trippr]

I looked at the installation guide for the version that comes with the tower, and it does look like their tower has some kind of protruding insert that twist-locks inside the hole in the top of the kegerator.

However, the same tower appears to have a very conventional flange with screw holes - though the installation guide says nothing about needing screws, and as best as I can make out, there aren't any screw holes on top of the kegerator.

It sure looks like it would be easy enough to drill mating screw holes without an issue, but if you're not comfortable with the concept, it might be best to get their tower kit (assuming it's sold separately) and sell your Krome...

Cheers!

 

[goodrica]

day_tripper,

Thank you for your help, I think you convinced me without meaning too, I should just man up and drill the 4 mating screw holes. If I can't do that, then I have bigger problems. Also I see you are from Stow, good luck with the snow coming tomorrow night - stay safe and enjoy a stout.

Cheers.

 

[day_trippr]

They're only predicting up to a foot here, which sounds pretty small against the 30+ we got from the big one

Anyway...I think you'll be fine attaching that tower. I would mark the hole centers, then use a rather small drill, say just bigger than coat hanger wire (I dunno, 9/64 or so?) and drill just through the top. Then poke around inside with a piece of that coat hanger just to make sure there isn't anything other than foam within range of the screw holes, before drilling the final holes.

Btw, if that fridge actually has a metal outer skin (can't actually tell from the pics in the installation manual) you may be able to get away using fairly short stainless steel oval head sheet metal screws instead of running long machine screws clear through the inside liner to fender washers and nuts...

Cheers!

 

[JRems]

I would use a small drill bit with a stop. It slides over the drill bit and limits the depth you can drill. Only drill through the outer layer.

 

[CMZ]

I originally typed up a long response here, but it got lost in the registering/login process. So I'm just going to type a condensed version here. Anyway, this is my first post on the forums, but I had the same issue a couple years ago. Drilled my own holes for the Krome tower, and it was fine. Turned out to be safe, and there were no issues with hitting coolant lines or anything. It was a little bit of a pain to figure out where to put in the screws for the tower, since it's not a good match in terms of size for the fridge. The base of the Krome tower is just big enough that, if you want it centered around the hole for the tower, the screws would go through the gap between the fridge itself and the base of the screw-in mechanism for the original Edgestar-branded tower. If you have the fridge, you should hopefully be able to figure out what I mean. It seemed like it would be tough to accurately drill the holes through that gap, so I placed my tower slightly off-center, so that the two screws on the left go through the plastic ring for the screw-in mechanism, and the two screws on the right go through the fridge itself. It's only off-center by a centimeter or so and isn't noticeable at all from the exterior.

Anyway, hope that helps if anyone has a similar problem in the future.