My latest addition...

[thatwasherguy]

Hi everyone! Hope you are all well. I'm very excited to share with you all my latest treasure; another vintage fridge for the collection. I'm going to let you all guess at what it is by the pictures. I'll give you a hint; it's much newer than it looks like.
Thatwasherguy.

 

[combo52]

It's an approximately 30 year-old subzero

Looks like a 36 inch dual compressor model.

There were tons of these in this area. A lot of our customers had them very popular refrigerator, this one doesn't look like it had the best life, hopefully you have a very good rate on electricity or just lots of solar panels to run it, they tend to be pretty expensive to run, especially as they age.

I have some spare parts for it if you need anything.

John L

 

[thatwasherguy]

Ding Ding Ding! We have a winner!

That’s exactly right! It’s a Sub Zero 550, from 1991. You’re also correct that it has had a rough life. Despite this, the only thing truly wrong with it is that the freezer circuit has a refrigerant leak in the drain pan heater, which has left it completely flat on charge. I ordered that part several days ago, and it should arrive next week. After that, plus a leak check and evacuation, it’ll be time for a recharge with about 8 oz of my favorite chemical compound; dichlorodifluoromethane. I’ll provide updates as I go.
Thatwasherguy.

 

[thatwasherguy]

The last 2 weeks with this thing have been a roller coaster

The drain pan heater was the easy part. Everything else was a series of words I can’t use here. First, the schraders on the fridge circuit died from the former owner attaching his refrigeration gauges, causing it to lose most of it’s R12 charge (I said ALL of my sentence enhancers over that). Once I got that dealt with, I changed the drain pan heater. After evacuating the freezer with the vacuum pump (where it turned the oil to milk), I charged it with refrigerant, only to be greeted with a system blockage, and a seized evaporator motor on the freezer. The refrigerant moved to a recovery tank, the evaporator motor was busted free for temporary operation, and I installed a massively oversized 5 cubic inch dryer, and cut the old one open, instantly spotting the two worst things you could possibly have in a sealed system; carbon and rust. The vacuum pump came back out, where it converted no less than 3 quarts of vac oil into milk. On top of that, I think it also killed my vacuum pump, as it now runs hot, makes bad noises, and blows oil mist, things that it never did before. After sufficiently messing up my vacuum pump, it was time to try again with the refrigerant. Part of me was expecting more issues, but it appears that it is finally going to work. I’ll try to get a video of it soon.
Thatwasherguy.

 

[combo52]

Wow

At the very least, you need to change the oil in the compressor for the freezer sealed system probably should just change the compressor.

Has the refrigerator evaporator been replaced yet? This vintage of subzero is notorious for bad refrigerator. Evaporators check the drain trough under the refrigerator evaporator for any sign of oiliness or oiliness on the lower tubes of the evaporator.

My business partner and I have been taken in by several of the subzero’s at this age and we always ended up giving up on them after a few years even if you get it all work well it still cost you $40 a month to run it.

There are so many much later model built-in refrigerators free for the taking. If you really want built-in, there’s a major Appliance company just north of us. I was up there the other week there were about 30 built-in refrigerators, all different models and brands. Just waiting to be crushed, I would definitely get something under 20 years old the KitchenAid’s and the subzero’s are the better ones but get something that doesn’t need sealed system work or at least hasn’t had it done badly.

John L