By Craig Kurath, Annie #38After four years of adding refrigerant to Annie's slowly leaking refrigeration system, everything came to a halt. The evaporator had pinhole leaks since it was made of pressed aluminum parts that had corroded. The years of adding refrigerant had put so much oil in the system that it hydro locked! I talked to the manufacturer and he said the compressor should still be good and I should send it to him for testing and recharging and the installation of a new moisture remover. He fabricated a new evaporator that used copper for carrying the refrigerant and attached copper tubing to my specified length. This came pre-charged as well and can be called "plug and play". I moved the compressor from the starboard storage area to just above the propeller shaft and just forward of the ice box. This gave me a little more storage space and removed a dreadful run of copper tubing from the ice box to the compressor. I fabricated the platform from 1⁄4" aluminum and it only cost me a half case of Budweiser to have it modified once, since my measuring was so perfect the plate touched the fresh water tanks on the first try. Everything functioned the first time and it is a little quieter with the compressor in the bilge.
An item of interest on the left side of the photo is the drain hose from the ice box. It went to a catch bottle rather than just into the bilge. The bottle never had much water, but had some interesting growths in it. The catch bottle had to go to make room for the new aluminum platform.
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