Forgive me for not taking more photos haha. I hadn't planned on making a thread for this until I was halfway through gutting it, so I'd be more than happy to answer anything.

Disclaimer: Use this little guide at your own risk. I am not an electrician, i'm pretty unskilled in stuff like this actually, I'm just crafty.

Materials list:

Emerson 12 bottle wine cooler: $60
Herpstat Intro+: $110
3" Flexwatt connected(2ft each)$18
Aluminum Tape: $10
Old AC adapter: Free

Total: $198 not including shipping.


Start: Remove the metal back of the wine fridge to expose all that jazzy electric stuff underneath. Unscrew the fans from where they're hanging out, the green wire connected to the power cord, and the bolts tethering the powercord to the cooler.





2: Cool! We've got this big metal thing now. Unscrew that. Unplug the wires from that circuit board. Unscrew everything else you can unscrew and you're left with the wires on the left, a big hole with access to the inside fan, and a naked kind of ugly cooler back.



3. Go inside and unscrew the back vent from the back to expose the fan. Right now it's set to pull air from the incubator and blow it through the hole in the back. Unscrew the fan, reverse the direction, put the fan back.


It should look like this v


4. Cool beans! Screw the fan in, and screw the back vent back into place. Head on to the back of the cooler and strip the red, yellow, and two black wires. Cut the end of the AC adapter and strip the wires as well. From here, match up the wires and see what powers what. Do not electrocute yourself. The red/yellow wires power the fan inside, the two black will power the temperature display on the front and the light inside. Solder them together, wrap them with electrical tape, or heat shrink tubing. There's a white wire left I just taped off because I don't know where that goes or what it does.



5. Good job, we should still be doing ok here. With the back being taped up, the fan pulls air through the top and bottom vents and gently pushes it around. Head back inside the fridge and break 5-6 of the little bars in the plastic vent. Feed both plugs through this hole.



6.
Moving on, tape your heat tape in whatever configuration works for you. I chose the 3" heat tape because it fits perfectly between the walls and fan and has the least amount of wires left inside.



7. Yaaaaay. Head on to the back of the cooler again and tape up that hole. Or leave it open. I taped it up because my room is around 65 degrees and I don't need the fan pulling in cool air constantly. Perhaps your wire management will be more graceful than mine, but this is what I did. You may also wish to insulate the back hole even if it is taped if the room is cold. (I later went back and added insulation and it helped keep temps much much better)



8. Slap on the back again, or don't. Up to you. I only used about 4 screws so it wouldn't be a pain to take apart if I had to get back in there. Connect your two heat tapes to your herpstat and set the temperature for whatever you're incubating.



9. Ya done it. I've snaked the herpstat probe through the top shelf to dangle through it, and that's where it's hanging out for right now. The probe for the cooler itself is attached to the fan and I use it as a backup. I also bought an Acurite thermostat which will be hanging out at the bottom.








Note: Skip steps 3 and 4 if you don't care about preserving the fan, light, or temperature display.

I'm going to be applying a thick mesh to the shelves to provide a more level surface for the cups to sit on, though I suppose you could also get new shelves and cut to fit.
I used the smaller deli cups with the black egg holders I bought from Pangea. Each shelf holds about 4 little cups with space inside for 8 eggs each. With 3 shelves, that's about 96 eggs. I'm going to be adding water bottles to the bottom to help retain temperatures when the door is opened (this is a small incubator, it loses its heat quickly in a cold room when the door is opened), filling the cups with the incubation substrate, and running the incubator for another week to see how things settle!