Thanks!
Much appreciated are the positive replies!
I get a whole lot of satisfaction from this type of repair work. It's very rewarding to make something work again once it's been given up on.
It's often frustrating to me trying to teach others in any structured setting. I learn by reading, watching, and doing. It's difficult to teach others who don't work in the same way. So for now I think I'll just keep to making videos to share! For my "real job" I have to teach others about certain equipment and it can frustrating. We are all of equal value as people, I firmly believe that to be true. However, we don't all have the same capability to learn at the same rate via the same channels.
Rich; you're right a shot of Freon is easy-peasy... but painting! Woohoo! That is getting way above my pay grade! I leave that to the professionals.
There's been a recent spate of drama on another online area of conversation. A restorer has been completely trashed over a paint job and some concealed dirt in a restored fridge; about which the new owner was unhappy and very vocal about it. After seeing how bad that went down, I choose to leave painting to a professional.
Ralph; I agree with you completely about the waste which the current and recent designs have created. Look at the Samsung fridge lawsuits and buybacks. Those are an absolute joke. Even when the owner tolerates the design flaws leading to leakage and icemaker problems - the compressor is not engineered to last beyond 5 years anyway.
I remember when the Freon regulations went into effect. In certain regions; no scrap yard would take a fridge which was not declared as having had its refrigerant evacuated. People were having to take the fridge to two places; once for reclamation and then to the dump. Sometimes there was a fee to have the gas removed. To get around this, people would cut the lines themselves, remove the compressor and lines; and then take the hull of the fridge to the landfill with no mechanicals in it. Eventually they caught onto that and forced the waste operator to refuse any recognizable refrigerator in any condition; without proof of evacuation. So then people were burning them first, and then taking the burned sheet metal to the dump where nobody realized what it was.
I don't know what the current rules are or if anything has changed. I've been in another industry and doing refrigeration as a hobby only for quite a few years now. Here in AL I take (very few) fridge hulls to a metals recycling place which may not fall under the same rules as a landfill. They never ask about refrigerant; but I expect they have their own reclamation equipment.
All this is very sad to me, considering the older machines would be better repaired and kept in service versus scrapping. I assure you the ones I have had to scrap were beyond hope due to rusted out cabinets or similar non-repairable concerns. And the mechanical parts are safely stored away for future use.... to keep the next one out of the scrapyard!
The thing that got me learning about antique fridges was one of these crappy ones. I got a new home and workshop about 8 years ago. Bought an apartment-size fridge for my workshop. It was some model from Lowe's and I think it cost about $150. After that, I found a 1950's Frigidaire similar in size and actually very similar in design to the Lowe's one. Same static-cooled condenser and compressor design; and same non-fan evaporator design. The evaporator was in the form of a small freezer box in the top of the fridge compartment. The new fridge and the old one were very similar in design principle.
The 50's Frigidaire was sold non-working. I found the start-relay was bad, and the door gasket was bad. Changed the relay and door gasket and it was up and running.
Fast-forward about a year, and the original Lowe's fridge stopped cooling. I checked the electrical side of things and found no issues. The compressor was either seized up, or there was a solid blockage in the system. I tried to have it replaced under warranty but they did not stand behind it. Claimed it had a one-year warranty.
At this current time, the 71 year old Frigidaire still works perfectly with its original Freon-12 charge. The new one didn't last two years. Both were similar in design; but one had 70 years worth of bean-counter engineering done to it and the other did not.
