New (to us) Propane Fridge

[Jafo]

I was listening to our local radio station one day while driving my daughter to school and they have a segment called "swap shop" where they read off stuff locals are selling. One item was a fellow selling his old 1940's era Servel propane fridge from his camp. Risking angering the guy at 7:30am when I heard the DJ read the ad, I called the gentleman who thankfully was awake and happy to take my call. Long story short, I bought it right over the phone for $200 and met him a few hours later at his camp. He told me 5 other people had called that day after me lol. I knew that would happen as these are getting harder and harder to find.

Thankfully the guy could give me a hand because this fridge is all of 300 pounds and getting it in my pickup was not an easy feat. Fortunately, these old ammonia absorption refrigerators can be laid on their back without any issues. I had to haul it around in my truck a couple days because I had nobody to help me take it off up at camp. My brother came up and with some planks and a hand-truck, we got it into camp.

We took this opportunity to replumb all the gas lines at camp to a cleaner, neater and more functional setup with all the proper shutoffs and conveniences. We got it all hooked up and initially had some trouble getting it to cool down until we realized we had knocked the burner out of adjustment and with a simple hand turn of the burner tube, viola, we had frost in the freezer section.

It took a weekend of getting used to it so we didn't freeze all the food and beer in the fridge section, but now we have a working propane fridge! Just a side note, the first thing I did was install a new carbon monoxide detector in the camp just to be on the safe side.

[Bob Rowlands]

Well they don't build 'em like that anymore, huh? Rock and roll roadies call old school 1970s era Ampeg 810 SVT bass cabinet 'the fridge' for a reason. lol