Locking fridge slide mod

The purpose…

In another post I detailed how I built a custom locking slide system for my Dometic 40 fridge/freezer. It worked great however there was major flaw with the design…it required 2 hands to open or close the fridge. As petty as this sounds, it was becoming a major inconvenience. While watching videos on YouTube about cool rigs at the Overland Expo West, I came across a video about a custom off road trailer and the person in the video slid out his fridge with one hand. I had to pause and rewind the video to see how it worked…EUREKA, it was simply a bar that connected both release mechanisms! Even though it was late at night I jumped off the couch and ran outside to see if I could “rig” something to work with my DIY fridge slide. Of course the next day I took a trip to Home Depot to get some ideas and ended up “testing” some threaded steel rods to determine what size I would need for this hack if it would actually work. Initially I had planned to use a 1/4″ rod but during testing I immediately new it was too small for this application. It turned out that a 3/8″ rod had far less flex and with a larger diameter felt much better in my hand. It came in a 24″ piece which was plenty long enough for the width of the fridge slide. To secure the rod to the slide my thought was to drill holes large enough for the rod to slide through and secure them with “acorn” nuts on the ends. Since the entire length of the rod was threaded I knew that this wouldn’t look good so I ordered a long piece of 1/2″ heat shrink tubing to give it a better feel and also to protect your hands when operating.

The entire project took about an hour to complete and is one of my favorite mods to date! It’s something simple, was cheap to make and yet makes me smile every time I use it. If you are going to attempt this mod my recommendation is to go very slow when drilling out the holes and don’t rush it. Also I advise you to pick up a “step bit” to help increase the hole size…the larger drill bits kept catching and binding so without the step bit, I would not have been able to make the hole. Since the release mechanisms on the slides are not much bigger than the 3/8″ rod, you also have to be very careful to center the hole which leaves you just enough steel on it to work. Overall I am very happy with this mod and wouldn’t change anything about it. Hope you enjoyed it and thanks for reading!

If you have any questions or comments, please post them below ?

The original locking sliders had a plasti dip type coating

I removed the plastic and drilled a small hole in the center of the handle gradually increasing the size…

until the hole was 3/8″ in diameter (notice the small burr on the top where the bit caught an edge)

A quick test to ensure the fit

The opposite side was drilled out to match and a simple hack saw was used to cut the excess steel

The rod cut to size with acorn nuts installed and the heat shrink tubing ready for the heat gun

I used a heat gun to shrink the tubing and give it a super clean look and feel. Project complete!