[jimcol]

The new unit showed up Tuesday UPS. Unboxed it and was a little disappointed as the side frame rail was bent and the facing tape was not consistent when they foamed the coils. In fairness the directions said bent side rails were common due to shippers. (This was not caused by the shipper as the box was in perfect shape. The manufacture rep said it probably got bent at the factory. Oh well!) I was able to straighten it enough to use and manipulated the facing tape to where it was at least consistent and proceeded with the installation. Went pretty much as expected per the instructions. Took 5 hours to install the unit including remounting the electrical box, re terminating the wires, installing gas burner, and electric heater. Since the 5’er is in storage I used a battery for 12v needed for the control board, plugged the 110 into garage outlet. Inside both frig and freezer temp was 68.5F. Left thermometers in both boxes and closed the doors. Turned the unit on, set for auto as I didn’t have the right fittings to hook up a gas bottle and walked away. Two hours later I opened the freezer door and thermometer read 0.4F degrees. Check the frig box and it read 32.5F. WOW, the old unit never cooled that fast. I changed the setting from 5 coldest to 4 next to coldest. One hour later the frig was reading 36.1 and the freezer was reading 2.0. Based on these #'s 4 will be my preferred setting. I’ll let it run all night to see how it holds. I won’t be able to test it on gas until I put it back in the 5’er but I did check the electronics by selecting gas. I could hear the igniter clicking so hopefully that will be OK.
This was not a bad job. Wish I could do another one as I know I’d be much faster. Directions were good and Dave Forest provided excellent technical support. I’ll try to post some pictures but I watched several YouTube videos by searching on “Amish Built cooling unit’s” They will give you the best idea of what you are getting into. Jim