More fridgie fun
Hello and welcome to my anual post in this thing!
I fixed another broken fridge a couple of weeks ago, so I thought I'd mention it here, just in the off chance it helps somebody somewhere to do something similar.
I have way more fridgie tools now than I had in the last post, so am able to do a propper job of gassing, vacuuming etc.
A vacuum pump, preferably 2 stage rotery vane, and a hose and gage set are essential, and a set or 2 of ball valves, and extra hoses are handy.
Also, brand new, (not used) propane barbeque bottles are good for storing refrigerants if you can make some adapters to go from them to the good old 1/4" flare schrader valve fitting.
Don't try that one at home!!!
Ok, the fridge in question was a fisher and Paykel bar fridge
It had been sold to a friend of mine, but it didn't work, I.e. didn't get cold.
I found that there had been a hole in the evaporater, (freezer section) that appeared to be caused by a tiny crack on the inside, but something had banged into and slightly bent the whole front edge of the thing.
Anyway, a service valve was already fitted, and somebody had clearly attempted to fix the hole with aroldyte!
That had pealed off, and all the presumably replaced gas had gone for a wander as well!
After a fair bit of googling I found answers that ranged between don't bother and yep it can be done with complete success.
Don't solder, definitely don't try a blow torch, or it'll just melt before your eyes, so the last option was epoxy of some kind.
What I did.
I needed really dry air to pressurise it, so I used a garden watering system filter case, removed the filter insert, and made end plugs out of about 4 squares of toilet paper folded to a thin strip and rolled up as a tightly fitting plug in the ends.
I filled the cartridge with freshly microwaved dry silica jel, Can be cheaply purchased as crystal litter for cats in the supermarket, and made adapters for the ends with hose clamps, and a couple of refrigeration schrader valves, (ebay) which I flaired on the ends and packed up with clear tube so I could seal it into the end of a couple of inches of garden hose to connect the nipples of the cartridge to them.
This gave me a nice inline air dryer which I then connected to a refrigeration line and drpooed in the deep freeze so it had the cold dry air from in there to use.
I also now have a couple of old fridge compressers that have schrader refrigeration valves on the in and outlets, so I connected the inlet of this to the dry air source, and the outlet side through my gage manifold set, (ebay) and pumped the broken bar fridge up to about 200PSI.
This easily revieled where the leak was, so I then vacuumed the fridge down and temperarly sealed the hole with bluetack.
I actually went away for a week, and the vacuum was still good over a week later, so no other leaks it seems!
What I did to repair it was to first let in dry air, from the device I mentioned above so it wouldn't get dust and crud sucked inside, and then used wet and dry paper to do a good sanding of the leak area.
I wanted to get all paint, oil, and oxide, as much as you can with alluminium, off it.
I then rubbed it down with isopropyl alcohol.
After that I pulled a vacuum on the system.
Next, after much considderation, I dug out some of that 2 part epoxy putty you get from hardware stores, and broke off a pee sized bit.
I totally mixed it as you should, and rubbed a thin layer of it over the area where I wanted to seal and rubbed it in like sun tan cream to really get it stuck hard!
I then applied the rest of the blob over the of it and pressed it hard down into the area. Something interesting I discovered was that this stuff dissolves in isopropyl alcohol, so I rubbed a little of it over the finished repair which liquified the edges, and gave it a really nice smooth junction back to the metal.
This should make sure that ice can't form under the edge and rip it off over time.
I warmed it up with an old hair dryer and then allowed it to set for a few hours.
The stuff has gone absolutely rock hard, and has not shown any sign of trouble since!
The last thing to do was of course the re gas.
I left a vacuum on it for over an hour to hopefully pull out any moisture I'd let in with compressed air etc, and while doing that, I hit the dryer module with the hair dryer, That's the larger cylindrical bit between the end of the condenser and the capilliary tube at the back of the fridge.
That should have largely rejuvinated the desicant in it, as I had no idea of how long that system had been open to the air before I got to it.
I kept that nice and hot while under full vacuum, so that's about the best I can do!
Finally I turned off the ball valve I had on the compresser service port, and removed the vacuum.
The last stage was to re gas the fridge.
I did this much as described in the previous articly with a can of servisol air duster spray.
It seems to be correctly gassed at about 64g of that.
Warning, some cheap brands of air duster are just butane.
It doesn't work well in fridges on it's own, I've tried it!
Propane on the other hand........
The servisol and CRC stuff are r-134a and are the correct gas to use for most current domestic fridges!
The fridge sat here for over a week after that, and I've turned it on and off a few times over that period, and it's working perfectly! No sign of leakage, performance loss or anything over that time, and the epoxy putty has stayed rock hard with no pealing or cracks.
So, fingers crossed it's a winner!
I'll know more once she gets around to taking it out of her car and putting it back into service!
I fixed another broken fridge a couple of weeks ago, so I thought I'd mention it here, just in the off chance it helps somebody somewhere to do something similar.
I have way more fridgie tools now than I had in the last post, so am able to do a propper job of gassing, vacuuming etc.
A vacuum pump, preferably 2 stage rotery vane, and a hose and gage set are essential, and a set or 2 of ball valves, and extra hoses are handy.
Also, brand new, (not used) propane barbeque bottles are good for storing refrigerants if you can make some adapters to go from them to the good old 1/4" flare schrader valve fitting.
Don't try that one at home!!!
Ok, the fridge in question was a fisher and Paykel bar fridge
It had been sold to a friend of mine, but it didn't work, I.e. didn't get cold.
I found that there had been a hole in the evaporater, (freezer section) that appeared to be caused by a tiny crack on the inside, but something had banged into and slightly bent the whole front edge of the thing.
Anyway, a service valve was already fitted, and somebody had clearly attempted to fix the hole with aroldyte!
That had pealed off, and all the presumably replaced gas had gone for a wander as well!
After a fair bit of googling I found answers that ranged between don't bother and yep it can be done with complete success.
Don't solder, definitely don't try a blow torch, or it'll just melt before your eyes, so the last option was epoxy of some kind.
What I did.
I needed really dry air to pressurise it, so I used a garden watering system filter case, removed the filter insert, and made end plugs out of about 4 squares of toilet paper folded to a thin strip and rolled up as a tightly fitting plug in the ends.
I filled the cartridge with freshly microwaved dry silica jel, Can be cheaply purchased as crystal litter for cats in the supermarket, and made adapters for the ends with hose clamps, and a couple of refrigeration schrader valves, (ebay) which I flaired on the ends and packed up with clear tube so I could seal it into the end of a couple of inches of garden hose to connect the nipples of the cartridge to them.
This gave me a nice inline air dryer which I then connected to a refrigeration line and drpooed in the deep freeze so it had the cold dry air from in there to use.
I also now have a couple of old fridge compressers that have schrader refrigeration valves on the in and outlets, so I connected the inlet of this to the dry air source, and the outlet side through my gage manifold set, (ebay) and pumped the broken bar fridge up to about 200PSI.
This easily revieled where the leak was, so I then vacuumed the fridge down and temperarly sealed the hole with bluetack.
I actually went away for a week, and the vacuum was still good over a week later, so no other leaks it seems!
What I did to repair it was to first let in dry air, from the device I mentioned above so it wouldn't get dust and crud sucked inside, and then used wet and dry paper to do a good sanding of the leak area.
I wanted to get all paint, oil, and oxide, as much as you can with alluminium, off it.
I then rubbed it down with isopropyl alcohol.
After that I pulled a vacuum on the system.
Next, after much considderation, I dug out some of that 2 part epoxy putty you get from hardware stores, and broke off a pee sized bit.
I totally mixed it as you should, and rubbed a thin layer of it over the area where I wanted to seal and rubbed it in like sun tan cream to really get it stuck hard!
I then applied the rest of the blob over the of it and pressed it hard down into the area. Something interesting I discovered was that this stuff dissolves in isopropyl alcohol, so I rubbed a little of it over the finished repair which liquified the edges, and gave it a really nice smooth junction back to the metal.
This should make sure that ice can't form under the edge and rip it off over time.
I warmed it up with an old hair dryer and then allowed it to set for a few hours.
The stuff has gone absolutely rock hard, and has not shown any sign of trouble since!
The last thing to do was of course the re gas.
I left a vacuum on it for over an hour to hopefully pull out any moisture I'd let in with compressed air etc, and while doing that, I hit the dryer module with the hair dryer, That's the larger cylindrical bit between the end of the condenser and the capilliary tube at the back of the fridge.
That should have largely rejuvinated the desicant in it, as I had no idea of how long that system had been open to the air before I got to it.
I kept that nice and hot while under full vacuum, so that's about the best I can do!
Finally I turned off the ball valve I had on the compresser service port, and removed the vacuum.
The last stage was to re gas the fridge.
I did this much as described in the previous articly with a can of servisol air duster spray.
It seems to be correctly gassed at about 64g of that.
Warning, some cheap brands of air duster are just butane.
It doesn't work well in fridges on it's own, I've tried it!
Propane on the other hand........
The servisol and CRC stuff are r-134a and are the correct gas to use for most current domestic fridges!
The fridge sat here for over a week after that, and I've turned it on and off a few times over that period, and it's working perfectly! No sign of leakage, performance loss or anything over that time, and the epoxy putty has stayed rock hard with no pealing or cracks.
So, fingers crossed it's a winner!
I'll know more once she gets around to taking it out of her car and putting it back into service!