Thanks for the comments!
Ken; yes it's fascinating to see how different it is from anything we have today. The paint shop owner said people were asking about "the filing cabinet" or "the electrical panel" he had in for paint. They were fascinated when told it was a fridge LOL!
I'm sure there were many icebox hold-outs. There are people who resist major shifts in the way we carry our lives. There are those without electricity. There are those who couldn't afford to upgrade. Lots of iceboxes were around for years I'm sure.
When looking for these fridges, you need to remember where the were sold. They were sold in areas with early electrification; such as near big cities. They were also mainly sold in affluent areas. Those folks lived in exciting times, for sure.
There's always the argument of "modern reliability" versus "historical correctness" when we talk bout these. There are a few major, professional restoration shops who sell this sort of unit, for a premium, with modern condensing units. This is not the reason I'm in the hobby. As you said, I want to know how it ran and sounded when it was sold to its original owner.
They mix up the concepts of "reliable" with "durable." A modern unit may be reliable, but it wears out and then is not feasible to rebuild. In other words, it goes 5 years without any breakdowns but when it's done it's
done. The durable old units do require maintenance, but they can be fixed over and over and just keep on performing. Aside from the time spent, and the "shop supplies" used; the only parts replaced on this Frigidaire were wiring, belt, shaft seal and door gasket. Everything else was cleaned and re-used. I did change the insulation not because it was bad but because I didn't want to have to fight with the hard cork panels going back together.
Stan, the shop is a Sherwin-Williams distributor. It was an acrylic enamel base / clear. I'm not a painter so, unfortunately, I don't know more about it that that.
So yesterday evening I got the flooding back issue fixed. I thought I had posted about it here, but apparently I must have hit "preview" and not "Post" so it didn't go. Forgive any brevity in my message as I am trying to re-type it with little time to spend this morning.
The flooded evaporator needs to have a tiny amount of liquid reach the return line to the compressor. This is how it carries oil back to the compressor. In the case of mine, it was carrying back a large volume of refrigerant, and making frost appear on the line going back to the compressor. This is bad for many reasons. I tried an experimental oil wick design on this, to hopefully make the float adjustment less critical. Apparently I had used too many wicks, and it was building up a suction and drawing refrigerant through the wicks. After removing half of the wicks, it seems to be working correctly now.
I used the service valves to "pump down" the refrigerant into the receiver, so that none was lost and I didn't have to use the recover machine.
Here is a video with much more info!
