Westinghouse Deluxe Refrigerator - 1935

[turbokinetic]

Here's a nice Westinghouse refrigerator that I found locally. The guy wanted an arm, a leg, and half a torso for it. But, when I went to look at it, it had oil in the cabinet, and was not working. I looked it over and the condition was so good that I decided to haggle with him. Got him talked down to a reasonable figure for a non running but nice piece such as this. (don't want to talk dollar amounts on open forum though)

The only real uglies were worn door hinges, and a door latch that wouldn't release every time.

Having fought the door hinge battle before on a friend's CK monitor top, I knew that simple machining flat and bushing install would get these working like new, so that I did.

For the door latch, it took soldering in a sleeve made of automotive brake line tubing. Then that was filed down to width and everything was right with the door!

Try as I might, I couldn't find the refrigerant leak. It held vacuum overnight, and I could not find any leak with soap bubbles nor with an electronic refrigerant leak detector. Maybe this is one of those "50 year leaks" that nobody can find!

The unit gave me a challenge to get refrigerant in it. Seems they had a very poor design for the charging port. It would not accept flow into the system because of a loose ball below the service port screw. This ball would drop down and act like a check valve. I had to fabricate a new service port screw which holds the ball captive. This allows both evacuating and charging. After that, the gas went in easily and the unit works great.

The condenser fan motor was running slowly and was gummy feeling to turn. It had to come apart completely and have the oil wicks cleaned and re-oiled. I used the blue can 3-in-1 electric motor oil. This fan motor is interesting, and irreplaceable. It is a 2-phase motor. The design Westinghouse used is quite fascinating. The compressor motor is used as a rotary phase converter. After the compressor is running, the start winding of the compressor motor generates a second phase, 90 degrees shifted to the incoming power angle. The fan motor uses this to provide starting and high power in a compact size. I re-varnished the stator winding as well as replaced the motor's lead wires.

Every wire in the unit has been replaced. They were all hideously deterio-rotted and unsafe at any voltage.

I love the art deco styling. The cabinet is porcelain enamel with only a few tiny chips. It has a tray table that folds up in the door, and a rotating shelf. There are 3 drawers in it as well. Very deluxe indeed!

There are more than one person wanting this one, once it runs a few weeks and proves it's going to live. The compressor doesn't sound "bad" but it is louder than I expected. It is cooling well and not showing excessive run times, though.

Repair videos. Note that each video ends with a link to the next.

Sincerely,
David

 

[rp2813]

What a great Westinghouse with interesting features!  That is a real treasure!

 

The compressor sounds just like the one on my little 1939 Westinghouse (although it's understandably louder), which ran quietly and almost continuously for nearly 70 years before it went dead in 2008.

 

[turbokinetic]

Hey RP2813; sorry to hear yours went dead. Did it fail electrically? It seems these had a problem with the motor terminals failing. There was apparently a material quality problem with the insulators; where they would become conductive and short to the housing. Over time, this would get worse until the motor was actually faulted and tripping out; or burned the terminals out and released the refrigerant.

I haven't seen a Westy as fully equipped as this one. It was a great find!

 

[supersuds]

Seems Westinghouse had some ingenious design features, some good, and some not so good. The fan is really neat and compact, for sure. I don’t know the tray on the door would be as useful as real shelves on a Crosley, though!

I heard you say that you were recharging it with R-152. Did it have SO2 originally, or R-12? If you said, I apologize for missing it.

 

[Ultramatic]

 

 

 

I never knew revolving shelves were available so early on.

 

I just get floored when I see a beautiful work. Congratulations!

 

[turbokinetic]

Supersuds - As for the refrigerant; yes I used R152A. But as for the original, I'm afraid there's no one simple answer. According to the info I have received from various sources; including owners of similar models - the 1935 models would have had SO2 refrigerant. This one was clearly marked "F12" and, indeed, there was no smell of SO2 at any time while working on it. The compressor motor does have a label stating "recertified" or some such wording on it. I have a feeling that the original SO2 cooling unit failed early on in the life of the fridge, and was replaced with the Freon 12 unit. The fact that the markings were on it in this manner, would lead me to believe it was a Westinghouse rebuilt unit. The motor terminals (a known failure area) appeared to have been cut out and replaced by brazing in a new assembly. That sounds like a factory rebuild procedure.

Another mystery is the oil in the cabinet. If the leak was small and took years to leak the charge off, I would have expected any oil to have been cleaned up over time as normal cleaning of the fridge cabinet was done. The pooling oil in the cabinet would be indicative of a massive leak. But, I was unable to find the leak. Normally I have been successful at locating leaks; having the proper tools such as an electronic leak detector. But this time, nothing.

There was no oil on the evaporator, nor in the insulated space between the evaporator and the deck where the compressor mounts.

There was a general oiliness around the top of the unit, near the condenser. I was expecting to find something in that area, but no. Apparently that oil was gradually thrown from the fan motor.

My least likely theory is, that the compressor unit (or the whole refrigerator) came from a salvage facility. In this case, the refrigerant possibly would have been removed for regulatory compliance reasons. The only thing not making sense with this idea is the lack of damage to the system. Normally these people puncture the lines to remove the refrigerant, and there were no punctures and no repaired areas that I could find. It would mean that they had some method to remove the charge via the factory service port.

But the most likely scenario is that the charge leaked out slowly over time (possibly via the service port) and the oil in the cabinet is either from a spill in there, using it for storage of some oil based product; or it was somehow left over from a past incident.

Ultramatic - Thanks! I can't take full credit because the condition of the cabinet was this good when I got it. The only thing I did was clean the cabinet surfaces with Windex. The hinges and door latch were the only cabinet repairs. The rest was just rewiring and charging with refrigerant.

 

[combo52]

Oil inside a 1935 WH refrigerator

Hi Dave, don't rule out the possibility that some stored an oil can or some other strange thing inside this ref and the oil did not even come from the sealed system of this refrigerator.

John L.

 

[corvairgeek]

Our former Westinghouse

Awesome unit David! Amazing condition, especially if it didn't spend its life in a dry climate.
I was sad when our 1950 Westinghouse died. Started slowly, you could hear the compressor 'coast' to a stop when turned off. If it was working properly, you could hear it stop abruptly from the compression. Sometimes it would work for days initially when it started. A very odd, suspended compressor it had. Held a whole pound of R12.
Sure used less electric than the 1988 White-Westinghouse sitting in its place in our hot garage.

 

[turbokinetic]

John - you have a great point. My troubleshooting was sort of based on what the previous owner was saying. I can be naïve at times, and in retrospect, sellers are sellers and they want to convince you to buy something. To that end they will tell you what they think you want to hear. So his story could have been true or it could have been a complete fabrication. There's no telling where that oil came from. The consistency felt like refrigerant oil, but that color looks suspiciously like 2-stroke oil. Could have been a gardening supplies storage cabinet, with weed eater oil in there etc.

CorvairGeek - that's odd how the compressor would freewheel. I have a theory as to what was causing that. If there is a blockage in the system, the refrigerant will all be pumped into the high side of the system, leaving the low side in a vacuum. The compressor will free spin in a vacuum. When evacuating a float system via the high side, we run the compressor for a few moments at a time to help get the low side pulled down. The compressor definitely freewheels when stopped after this run.

Running in a vacuum can happen from a stuck float valve (surely your 1950 was not still using a float); or from moisture freezing up inside the capillary tube - if so equipped.

They say that older motor windings can release trapped water if they overheat "real good" but not to the burnout point. Such as if the compressor suffered from a bad start relay at some point in the past, and cycled on overload for a day or so. That could bake some water out of the motor winding insulation and leave it to clog the system with ice crystals.

Another possibility with any cap tube system is that some wear particles from the compressor got in the wrong place and plugged it.

 

[rp2813]

David, I don't know what caused my '39 to stop running.  It was a small model, maybe 4' tall, and the machinery was located under instead of over the cabinet, and the giant wheel cold control was located behind the front access panel.   It was impossible to conduct a visual inspection of all mechanical components in order to check for loose or broken wires.  The compressor didn't sound any different toward the end, so I suspect your motor terminal theory is correct.  I do recall the the fridge was operating erratically for a couple of weeks before it finally stopped entirely.  Another indicator that a wire may have been loose and ultimately detached. 

 

I was preparing to move at the time, and the fridge was located at my mom's house, where we were gearing up for an estate sale.  I loved that faithful little fridge, but let it go at the sale because I didn't have the expertise or the time to tear into it and diagnose things.  It was sold to someone who intended to revive it, so somewhere around town it's likely still keeping things cold.

 

[2packs4sure]

I have it's twin

Nice fridge !!
I have the twin to yours that I grabbed from heavy trash in some guys yard in 1991.
The door was off and the springs that "I GUESS" helped close the door were all stretched and mangled but other than that it was and still is very nice though I only have one flat shelf.
Our model I think is the sleekest sharpest Westinghouse fridge from the era for sure.
It never had a hinge issue but the compressor was done so I retrofitted a 1/6hp and capillary tube.
I just guessed at 1/6hp but it worked out
I cut the old float assembly open and it was basically a trash can...
The retrofit ran for 22 years in a smoking hot Houston garage before that compressor died.
It had to work HARD.
I need to get off my butt and fix it up again.

 

[turbokinetic]

Sorry I missed these two replies!

 

RP2813, those little Westinghouse units like that are nice and pretty desirable these days. Folks seem to like the smaller ones as collectible items and beverage fridges it seems.

As for the erratic operation, that's most likely a relay contact wearing out. I've acquired several very nice examples of 1940's Frigidaires which were erratic or nonfunctional after being erratic for a while.  The problem in every case was the contacts in the motor start relay / overload protector. These can be repaired, if you're a stickler for originality - or they can be replaced with a Supco relay / overload device.

 

Thankfully you were able to find a buyer who was intending to fix it up and not make a BBQ smoker out of it!

 

2packs4sure, Thanks! It is very nice.  Yeah, it's amazing what people will throw away. There was a lot of propaganda about kids getting trapped in old refrigerators and suffocating - so people were encouraged to destroy the door latch or remove the door from any old refrigerator which had a latching door. Many of our vintage fridges were damaged in this manner. As far as the springs on the hinges, the Westinghouse had one spring in it, which I took out. It seemed to push the door "straight out" so as to keep it from hinging back around and bumping into other kitchen cabinets. The spring in mine was stretched out and ruined as well.  IIRC certain GE Monitor Top cabinets also had these springs in them. I had to rebuild the hinges on a friend's CK recently, and it had springs in the hinges.  I could not retain them during the repairs to the hinges. Even so, the foot pedal door opener still works and kicks the door out nicely.

I guess during the failure of that original compressor, it had put a large amount of debris in the system and trapped it in the float chamber!  Was it mainly metal shavings?  Also, was that originally a SO2 system? I ask because they seem to fail with a lot more debris in them than the Freon systems did.

 

I would definitely get it up and running again! These are too nice to let them just sit.

 

[2packs4sure]

Lol,,,, you know,,,, turbokinetic,,,, you just hurt my brain.
I can still see the inside of that float assembly in my minds eye......
Garbage, some oil, etc,, but I can't for the life of me remember if it was metal or what.
I mainly remember dark chunks of debris contrasting with surprisingly clean oil.
It's been 25 ish years so I'm giving myself a pass on this one.
My unit was originally R12 and so was the early 90's refit.
I just walked in the garage and snapped these pictures and you can see my cap. tube conversion to the evaporator.
The garage AND my house are still a disaster after hurricane Harvey and the 8 inches of water in both.

 

[turbokinetic]

LOL sorry I hurt your brain! Not intentional I promise!

 

Yes that's darn nearly exactly the same unit! Very nice indeed. Hopefully you can get another compressor for it and get it up and going again soon.

 

A common problem using modern compressors on these has to do with oil return.  Remember that with a flooded evaporator, the system maintains a lot of oil in the evaporator. You need to add a couple extra ounces to the evaporator (assuming you would have removed the old oil from the deceased compressor) so that the new compressor doesn't run dry and fail.

 

The evaporator will collect even more oil than normal, if the charge level is low. If the frost line is not at the very top of the evaporator, there will be a large void space above the active liquid refrigerant. The oil will float up there and never reach the return line to the compressor.

The original compressors held a massive amount of oil. They could lose enough oil to fill the entire evaporator with oil and not run dry. These newer ones are designed for a system where the oil returns as fast as it leaves the compressor, and the sump only comes with an inch or so of oil in it. You've really got to make sure it is getting oil return.

 

I'm sure the old school Tecumseh recip you used for your modification had a lot of oil in it to begin with. The ones that suffer are the ones from the past 10 years or so.

 

Thanks for posting the pictures! Love seeing others' repairs and modifications.

 

 

 

[blackstone]

The title of this thread caught my attention, because I have this accessory for a 1930s Westinghouse refrigerator. Or so I assume. It is a cobalt blue water pitcher, made for Westinghouse by Hall China. The color of these pictures is very accurate to the actual color.

Only problem is that this pitcher is not waterproof. There was a broken piece on the bottom, which I glued, but not good enough to hold water. It is basically a decoration, brilliant color, and intended for these refrigerators.

That's the extent of my limited knowledge of this item. My parents apparently saved it from our store, but I never knew about it until cleaning out the store.

 

[turbokinetic]

Wow, that blue pitcher is quite a thing of beauty!  Never knew that came with these fridges. 

 

That looks about like a modern electric tea kettle, actually.

 

[rp2813]

Another Pitcher

I picked this one up for $2 around 1982 at a yard sale.  The lid had a poorly glued diagonal break in it that eventually separated.  I cleaned it up and Krazy glued it back together.  It has held ever since, but the break is still very obvious -- just not from the angle in the attached picture.

 

I like the style of this pitcher better than anything Fiesta ever put out.   It's a nice size that would fit on any rack/shelf.  The glaze is Westinghouse blue, not cobalt.  I've seen other Westinghouse pieces in this same color, but they were more utilitarian looking so I passed them by.

 

[turbokinetic]

Very unique!  At first I thought this was the same pitcher, laid on its side.

 

Oh, by the way - the refrigerator I started this thread with is still working well and has been actively used for cold drinks in a non-airconditioned room since it was fixed. Still sounds the same and has no problems maintaining temperature.

 

 

 

[wiskybill]

fan motor

David

I have this fan motor and relay that I salvaged from a Westinghouse
dehumidifier. I have no use for either and am offering to you if
they can be used to keep something else in service. The fan motor
looks like the one you restored.

The dehumidifier they came from was identical to the one pictured.

If you can use them send me an email(see my profile).

Your refrigeration skill is something I lack. Good job!

Bill