avocado green Sears Coldspot fridge and GE P7 double oven

[adam61]

It's spring break! (I teach high school) I don't know what my students are up to, but first thing I did was to go out and pick up some broken major appliances!?

The fridge gets cold, but I am concerned about a few things.

1. The tray on the bottom was filled with quite a bit of something that looked like some kind of oil. I wiped most of it up, and that fan down there has since dried out the rest, and it doesn't appear to still be leaving anything.

I need to clean down there it's full of lots of lint and other gunk, I wished I had blown it out when it was outside, but it was not easy to get into the kitchen so now I don't want to take it out again.

2. It runs nearly constantly. I plugged it in last night and it was still going when I went to bed a few hours later. It was off when I got up this morning, but went back on when I opened the door. After about an hour I turned the temp control down to 2/5 and it stopped, but after about 1/2 hour it started up again. It's plenty cold, just won't stop running.

3. It's cleaning up well, but there is some broken plastic parts inside.

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I don't even need the oven I bought, my house has the original stove and oven, also GE, and I don't really want to change them given that I still have all the original cabinets and they're based around having the stovetop and oven separate. But really like the avocado green, so I got it anyway - I have an enclosed back porch I was planning on enlarging and putting my TV collection in, (which is now just full of junk) - I'm going to see if I can make some space for it back there.

Two of the shafts for the controls for the burners are broken. I don't know if there are any other issues yet.

Update: while I was typing this the fridge finally stopped running.

 

[cfz2882]

is the back cover in place?-this is often missing,but is needed for proper condenser airflow.

 

[rp2813]

That fridge is a few years older than the Coldspot SxS my mom had, and the Whirlpool I had as a garage fridge, which was the same design as yours.  My mom's fridge used to cycle approximately 10 minutes on, 10 minutes off.  The owner's guide advised that when first plugged in, the fridge could run for up to 24 hours, so yours sounds like it's behaving normally.

 

The pan at the bottom collects the defrost water and the fan down there does double duty by drawing air to pass through the condenser coil to cool it and then routes the warmed air over the pan to evaporate the water, so it's doing its job.  I've seen some pretty funky looking pans in my day.

 

I can't tell from the picture, but usually the grille at the bottom front will accumulate dust on the side where the fan draws the air in, and you'll feel a warm draft blowing outward on the other side where the fan is pushing air past the evaporation tray.

 

Our Whirlpool had the same "space master" shelving system as yours.  It offers excellent flexibility and you can customize the configuration to suit your needs.   Too bad the freezer appears to be missing its shelf.

 

Be advised that your fridge will spin your electric meter at a good clip, but that's the price you pay for the level of quality in materials and workmanship of a vintage fridge compared to modern ones.

 

 

 

[adam61]

The back cover is there, but there is so much lint down there I could see that interfering with the airflow.

I have the freezer shelf, I just took it out to clean it.

 

[goatfarmer]

CLEAN THE CONDENSER ON THAT 'FRIDGE!

 

I've seen a lot of those older Coldspot 'fridges with a brown gunk in the defrost pan. I wouldn't worry about it. Post the model and serial number, and we can date it for you. I've had several of those over the years, they were always decent performers, and sellers.

 

[combo52]

1968 through 71 Sears cold spot top freezer refrigerator

These were very good refrigerators in the day, they were built by whirlpool you’re still has the famous whirlpool Seager rotary compressor.

That gunky evaporation tray just pulls out from the front and it should be washed it’s normal to have that type of black gooey buildup on it it’s not oil from the compressor or anything like that.

As mentioned it is important to have the back panel of this for proper operation.

In a 70° room a refrigerator like this will run between 50 and 70% of the time and it may run even more depending on what repairs have been done to it over the years.

This refrigerator came from the factory with a 12 hour timer it defrosted twice a day if the timer has been changed whirlpool changed them over to eight hour timer so it’s now defrosting three times a day this type of thing makes it run a lot.

We always modify these and put a 24 hour timer in in a low humidity part of the country like you’re in there’s no reason to defrost this thing more than every couple days actually, you can also modify it to use less energy by changing the condenser and evaporator fan motors to the new electronic tapes that are used in modern refrigerators in addition I put a couple of LED lightbulbs in it. You may also experiment with disconnecting the heater around the perimeter of the freezer door and even the one between the refrigerator and freezer door in a dry state like Arizona these heaters are unnecessary and they suck up another 30 Watts whenever the refrigerator is plugged in.

Even with modifications it’s still gonna use between two and four times as much electricity as a new refrigerator.

John L

 

[sudsmaster]

JohnL,

What great advice you give. I am wondering if you have any suggestions for my fridges, to save energy.

One is a 25 cu ft KA SxS, about 22 years old. The other is a KA 20 cu ft top freezer, about 12 years old. Both seem to run fine, but the top freezer sometimes ices up. I think I've made some adjustments that have prevented that for the past five years or so. Also have a 14 cu ft chest freezer, Kenmore. I manually defrost that about once a year. The SxS KA rarely if ever acts up.

The top freezer and chest freezer reside in an unheated enclosed patio, which is relatively well ventilated. The SxS KA in in the house. Being in the SF Bay Area, the temps in the enclosed patio are not too excessive, although it can get into the 80's in the summer and into the 40's in the winter.

Please let me know what you recommend.

 

[combo52]

Hi Rich, if you wanna send me the model numbers of the two refrigerators I may be able to suggest some energy improvements in them that are easy to do.

You can send them via personal message if you like thanks John