Westinghouse's future.

[Jitterbug]

Hello,
I have found a refrigerator I love, but the issue is I learned that it was once used to chill livestock medication. Can it still be used for food after cleaning?

 

[arbilab]

Medication almost always stays in containers. Just wash it down good. Not like it's radioactive or anything.

 

[Jitterbug]

Okay, I feel better Now. I would have serious questions to the person who would be putting radioactive materials in a refrigerator.

By the bye, how hard is it to find a cold control for a 1940's Westinghouse?

 

[arbilab]

You'd need a wiser man than I to say if any of today's controls would fit a 40s Westy. Seems Robertshaw made most oven controls so they are more or less a standard. Not sure the same can be said of cold controls.

 

[Jitterbug]

Come to think of it, do you suppose it could be fixed?

 

[arbilab]

The control itself? Unlikely. They're not made to be taken apart and if the internal parts (like contacts or diaphragm) are worn out those are no more available than the complete unit. What does it do? Not ever shut off? Or not turn on?

But that doesn't doom the fridge at all. First, hang on and see if somebody here knows about substituting antique fridge parts. Second, the cold control could be replaced with a digital sensor and solidstate relay, would take a little design work. Even a timed controller could work, say 15min on and 15min off. It couldn't account for how often the door gets opened but over time that's about what a fridge averages out to, half on, half off.

 

[Jitterbug]

It never shuts off. It essentially becomes a deep freeze.

 

[arbilab]

That's the best situation. It means the core of the machine is working perfectly after all these years. Gawd! It's nearly as old as *I* am. And I don't work perfectly any more.

If you can't find a substitute control, buy a timer and program it to turn on/off every 15 minutes. If it still gets too cold, program it to skip an ON cycle every other hour. If it gets too warm, program it to skip an OFF cycle every other hour. Or some permutation thereof.

 

[Jitterbug]

Do you suppose a modern control could be used?

 

[arbilab]

It may require some mechanical retrofit but otherwise a cold control is a cold control. Please don't take me as an expert on such things, I am only a nostalgic generalist and sub-graduate physicist.

 

[Jitterbug]

What luck, My brother works on refrigerators all the time, I'll ask him for one.

At first I thought that said sub graduate psychology, in which case, I suppose you could Psychoanalyse it and see why it gave out. : )

 

[arbilab]

Heheheh, there might be more to psychoanalyzing machines than we think. At our TV station we had this ass't chief. If you told him a machine was broken he'd walk up to it and suddenly it would start working. Like the machine either liked him or it was intimidated. After a couple years I picked up some of that talent from him.

Machines are people too

 

[appliguy]

Try Modern Parts in Parma Ohio

I got a cold control and a made to order door seal there for my 1957 GE fridge. the phone # is 216-661-6966....PAT COFFEY