Newer fridges, led lighting, 12 volt fan motor on the evaporator, electronic thermostat, these items should be easy to diagnose with a decent OHM meter, as for a compressor that runs intermittent this could be a faulty thermo safety disk which is internally attached to the motor winding's.
A decent clamp on amp meter will let you know how any amps the compressor is drawing on start up, check your findings against the manufactures data sheet, if the compressor uses a start capacitor I would check it's values.
Older fridges had a start relay attached to the compressor prongs, how the relay worked the copper coil was topside, inside a metal plunger when the compressor tried to start power initially went to both start and run winding's, the copper coil in the relay became energized lifting the metal plunger thus disconnecting the run winding from the circuit.
From older fridges that had external high side coils attached to the rear, save them. Once you understand the chest freezer you'll understand why.
The chest freezer looking inside you can see lines of frost forming on the inner walls, this is the low side, now slowly run the palm of your hand down the outside front of the freezer you will find warm spots, this is the high side ( condenser ) where the gas has been returned to a liquid.
The condenser lines are also located topside of the flooring, when people defrost the freezer, that frost you seen on the inside walls also forms on the backside where you can not see it and what happens if the defrost water settles unnoticed to the bottom where it rots out the steel condenser lines a pin hole is all it take to leak out the
freon.
What I've done in the past is to eliminate the leaking high side, attach the external condenser previously salvaged from an older fridge to the rear of the freezer, don't worry about drilling into any lines when affixing the external condenser because we're excluding the old leaking internal condenser from the system.
Compressor lines, the smaller one is your high side.
How to check if your curbside fridge is worth the cost, time and effort, plug it in put an ear onto the cabinet near the freezer compartment, you will hear a spiting sound this will be the freon as its leaving the capillary tube as a liquid fast becoming a gas.
Check were the previous owner last left the thermostat setting, if its at max that's a good indication the defrost timer is faulty, when the timer goes south the evaporator gets choked with ice and the air can no longer flow through the fins.
As the defrost timer goes into its defrost cycle there's a heater embedded into the evaporator coil to assist, these heaters are known to burn out and sometimes when they do they'll arc and burn a hole into the evaporator letting out the freon.
Another thing to look for, water from the defrost cycle goes down a plastic tube,, sometimes a bag of peas or corn will spill inside the freezer some of which finds its way into the drain this blocking it, also check for mold inside the drain tube, spoonful of bleach will kill the mold, another thing to look for make sure the drain tube underneath the fridge is correctly positioned into the drain pan where the water is heated from the compressor to be evaporated adding humidity into the house.
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Originally Posted by 406Refining
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