80s yuppie dream acquisition~Subzero 361RFD

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funktionalart

funktionalart

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Joined
Jun 2, 2014
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1,162
Location
Rison, AR
After 30 years of wanting one, I finally got a SubZero today. 1987 model. FIFTY DOLLARS. Cripes....the aluminum grille is worth 3-5 times that. Feeling happy. There is a GREAT appliance haunt out here which has put me in ownership of a full kitchen appliance rehab for really zero money.

Got an unused 1993 KitchenAid Superba KUDS23 (black and chrome~$12 on half-off sale day), Matching unused trash compactor for $9 and now this. Photo is same model, but someone else's. The one I got has pretty naff carved golden oak panels to match someone's country kitchen. I plan on removing and doing either copper sheet or Asian grasscloth under clear acrylic :-) Of course it has SubZero's horrendous fake wood tape/gold trim shelving and crisper drawer faces which can easily be sorted out by a creative type like me.

Feelin' happy....had to brag and share!
 
Will this time work?

one final try----sorry! And yes...ALL the crisper and door shelving is that naff color. Gonna get creative with some faux wood removal and replacement with a cool modern hue.

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Allen (my name, too)....you need to jump in the truck

and visit me. I can stock you up! Well, I am (1): cheap. (2): lucky and (3): compelled!
Phoenix is full of the typical disease people have in this country of "pitch-itis"....pitch it when they're tired of looking at it or "have to have that stainless steel from Lowe's".

This is good for me....coz I wind up with VERY nice TOL, barely used "recent vintage" and true vintage stuff for lunch money most of the time. It's sort of a fair trade for having to live in this God-awful heat, I guess.
 
Phil~re KUDS23...

Sure! I will take shots of a lot of this stuff soon. That KA was such a great find. I used to have a Monterey 21 way back when. This KUDS23 looks just like it and is very close to brand new as you can get for a '93-94. LOVE it.
 
re; Coolerator...

Tom,
No....I just can't do it. There is zero room for one, and a run to San Diego just can't happen right now. I really get caught up in the visuals of appliances like that, so have to really exercise a lot of control when bargains show up. Unless someone wants to buy me a warehouse!?!?!?
 
The Thing Is....

Some folks swear by SubZeros.

Others swear at them.

In all the years I've been aware of high-end appliances, SubZeros seem to have the most variable owner experience of any. Thermador owners? Usually very happy. Jenn-Air? Happy, if they bought real Jenn-Air before the company got bought out. KitchenAid? Same as Jenn-Air.

But SubZero owners are either very happy, or they're ready to get an antique icebox and arrange for ice delivery so they never have to deal with an electric refrigerator again. Not much in-between.
 
Exactly....SubZero CAN be very good if~

You treat it well from new. Condenser cleaning is a MUST. Never ceases to amaze me that this is so overlooked in all fridge types. It's not something the average person ever thinks to do. They just expect to plop a six or eight-grand appliance into place and forget about it~thinking their cash outlay negates basic maintenance requirements. Anyway, everyone I personally ever knew who bought one has never had anything bad to say...but looking online, the gripes and moans are plentiful.

What I DO like about the SubZero I bought is that it is still a "basic" unit. ONE compressor, not 2. NO circuit boards/dodgy electronic stuff. Quite straightforward in as much as a fridge can be, I think.
 
I've specified quite a few SubZeros through the years and they generally hold up well. One nice thing about them is that there is a wealth of service knowledge and parts for them; even an old SubZero can often be repaired with factory parts.
 
SubZero Knowledgebase IS big...

and with the advent of online communities like this, NOTHING "can't" be fixed. Where any mass-produced item exists...so does a following and more than a few people who have stashes of scarce parts waiting to be used!
 
 

 

Allen, that is a screaming deal on the fridge, CONGRATS!!!

 

When my ex and I bought our house, it had a 20 cu ft, Sub-Zero counter depth refrigerator only in the kitchen.   When we moved in it wasn't working.  A friend who did refrigeration checked it out and replaced the temp control thermostat.  It probably wasn't a "Sub Zero" part, but was also less than $25.   I liked the large shelf area (vs a side x side), but not having a freezer in the kitchen was an annoying.  

 

Kevin
 
Sub Zero Refrigerators

I have long said that it is amazing how something as expensive as a SZ ref can be almost worthless when it is even 10 years old. In this country there is a huge market for used Cadillac, Lexus, Mercedes Benz cars etc, but try selling a two year old SZ and you will be lucky to get 1/4 of the initial price. And I am like you Allen, I love a bargain.

All that said your 1987 SZ is a very repairable ref, but I would hold out for one that is a decade or more newer, the dual compressor models are far better at keeping proper temperatures and a 1987 SZ will use nearly four times as much power as the current models. I just did a service call on a 1985 SZ like the one you just got last week, we put in a new compressor in January and now it needs both evaporators. It is really common on these SZs to have evaporators in the refrigerator section fail because they use un-coated copper and gets full of pin holes if you look at the drain trough below the evaporator and the evaporation pan under the ref they will likely be very green from the copper oxide. I would check over this ref carefully before you invest much effort in it, if you are lucky it may have already had a new evaporator in stalled, other big problem areas are the condenser fan motor and the cheap plastic fan blade, and just about every other electrical part.

John L.
 
Thanks, John~

I won't know until the weekend just what (if anything) is going on inside the unit. My testing abilities were limited by the shop I got this from. It took 1/2 hour just to find a live wall plug and extension cord. They just wanted me to buy as-is. I insisted that even for $50, I needed to at least hear the compressor run and see if any cooling at all would take place.

What's funny, is that it was priced at $250 for about 3 months. Monday I went back and it was marked $50/needs service. They said it didn't run. I jiggled a relay wire, sparks flew, and the fridge powered up and ran nicely. HOWEVER...the compressor was QUITE hot after about 20 minutes...so I know already that at a minimum the condenser coil's probably plugged with dust/lint/etc...and the cond. fan may not be running at full capacity. I could feel warm air blowing out the front and the fan looked to be spinning rapidly...but I've dealt with that before on my JennAir (put a piece of notepaper near the fan and it wouldn't chop it). The JennAir fan was $9 on ebay for a US made, all metal unit. I think the SZ I bought had a metal fan blade...it may be a replacement.

Good to hear you repeat some info I'd seen re; copper issue. I hear that the problem was enough for SubZero that they went aluminum for this. I'll know more when I fully open it up this weekend and look inside. If it looks a mess/terribly costly, then I'll just sell the grille on ebay and recupe my cost x3!
 

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