Vertical or Horizontal Evaporator

[TBOT422]

I have seen the evaporators installed vertically or horizontally on different 350's. Ours happens to be installed horizontally. It seems to me that the vertical installation would make it easier to access the stored food since it is a top loading freezer. My question is which do you have and do you like or dislike it from a storage and access aspect? Secondly, has anyone attempted to change a horizontal installation to a vertical installation? It appears to be simply mounted to the compartment wall with 4 screws and could easily be rotated 90 degrees and reinstalled by drilling a couple of new holes without disconnecting any Freon lines. Maybe some gentle bending of the evaporator could make it fit the compartment a little better, but it doesn't appear to be a huge job. The downside is you would need 'vertical' ice cube trays if you wanted to freeze your own cubes.

Thanks for any inputs.

[Richard Kollmann]

There are two concerns I would have about rotating a currently installed horizontal evaporator to a vertical position. First there is a bonded joint a short distance from evaporator where its aluminum tube is connected too the long copper tube that is easily fractured creating a, non repairable, refrigerant leak. The second problem is if it is necessary to remove and reinstall the long section of 1/4 inch copper tube additional unbending and re-bending work hardens copper tubing. Bending this tube in the same area more than seven times will cause it to fail.