[tjjustice]

I bought a used refrigerator Kenmore ( model # 59650392001) two years ago from a guy who wanted it out of his garage. Actually went there for his beautiful glass top oven and he said he would throw in the frig for another $200.00. Since I had brought my trailer along for the oven and both appliances were super clean we made a deal and he even helped load that monster onto the trailer. Got home and needed son's assistance to unload the beast and carefully snake it to the kitchen. No lost fingers crushed toes or anything. Plugged the beast in, swapped contents and the crew all had a couple cold ones as we sat marveling at the hospital white unblemished beast. The next day I hauled the old almond colored antique to the curb where it was snatched up in less time then it took to go inside for the door removal tools. I wonder how many major appliance honeymoons end up in a premature divorce these days. Reading these appliance forums for a while you know your not alone.

Two years down the road. One day notice the SXS is warmer then normal on both sides but figure it is because when you close the refrigerator side a puff of air pops open the freezer door. Thinks he will have to buy a latching device to secure the freezer door. After doing a Google search on it any fix found is promptly forgotten and wife puts up post-it it note on freezer door reminding me to make sure the freezer is closed. Also reminds Pop that he's getting older and more forgetful and needs to work on those love handles too.


Fast forward 48 hours later Pop is loading everything he can freeze in a upright freezer that thankfully still works. Everything else gets tossed out. Pop says to himself #@%#@*! lousy SXS piece of junk. Looks up model # and finds Kenmore is an umbrella name and it may be manufactured by Frigidaire, Amana, Whirpool etc. Next input serial # and finds manufactured in 2000. Sure is pretty for 12 years old. Next is cruising appliance forums looking for others in the same boat. Finds out that click noise from the compressor may just be a relay or overload device. Locates Harbor Freight multitester and it does not work either and besides will have to watch several hours of tutorials on you tube to master it. Am I getting warm?

Forget that for now. Pull the relay and overload capacitor and examine it. Disgusted that it is not burnt to a crisp... gulp, might be the compressor, but if it is... won't be worth fixing. Hum the relay looks good and no rattle but separate overload capacitor has a rattle. Grab the magnify glass and looks pretty good. Notice the relay is stamped Mexico and the Klixon overload thing is from Korea. Hey the compressor is made in the USA because it says Tecumseh on it. Forget that, says Brazil on closer inspection. The refrigerator is United Nations compliant. Thank goodness don't have to worry now. They clean up messes around the world 24-7-365.

Ok enough fun, cut to the chase. The wife is about to kill me cause I have been screwing around with this thing for 4 days already. In browsing the forums I learn about the 3 in 1 or hard start things that might bump this thing into gear. I read a lot of controversy about these devices but figure it is cheap and the appliance parts guy down the road has them all over his wall in all kind of sizes, not made by Supco but a spitting image of the supco thing. On the way down I stop by my sons place and borrow his multitester but the appliance guy tests it with his meter and thinks they are alright and points out I was running my Ohms test on the wrong terminal. I am adamant about having a go at the compressor with the hard start and pluck down the 20 bucks figuring if the compressor is shot dismantle this now ugly thing and haul it to the curb. As I leave the store the shop keeper says if the compressor is hosed you can haul it to the scrap yard and get maybe 35 bucks for it, but I remind him that chiropractors don't come that cheap.

I get home and I got screws all over as I pulled the condenser fan trying to get at some accumulated dust and crap that is sandwiched between the pan and the bottom of the condenser coils. It looks like a poor design to me and probably best blown out with a compressor or reverse on the shop vac. No way I am going to try that inside the house though. I'm already in the dog house with the little lady as it is.

So this is where I am at now. Oh yeah, the wiring diagram is pasted to the back of the frig at a two year olds eye level and my digital camera is shot so I have to lay on the floor and study the wiring diagram or use my 35 mm film camera to snap a pic of it and run it down to wally world for a 1 hour processing and have a disc made. My cell phone is no help either with no camera in it and so old came with a rotary dial.

Unfortunately have not been able to find the wiring diagram for this online. So today I went to Ace hardware and bought a 9' 14 gauge grounded appliance cord. This brings me to a question the power cord for this model is no longer available through here or any place online and has to be scrounged around dusty appliance store back rooms. My question is this. The power cord on this is an 18 gauge with ground. From what I gather this is a 1/3 hp compressor even though I cannot find that stamped on the side of the compressor I have access to. But 18 gauge seems thin to me for this appliance. The only blemish on this thing is that the power cord was abraded right down to the wire on the hot side but appears none of the conductors are severed. I noticed the tape on it when we bought it and it doesn't seem to affect the running.

So today I attached the new cord directly into the hard start ( ERP 410 ) replaces RCO410 and the ERP stands for Exact Replacement Parts. I double checked all my connections were correct it was grounded with the green, and plugged it in and the compressor started to sound basically like a real quiet compressor. I mean very quiet like hard to tell if it was running, but at least no clicking so the hard start seems to be working. After a few minutes the copper line going to the condenser coil was getting warm but the other copper line going up into the area of the evaporator did not feel particularly cold so I guessed it would have to enter an ( expansion valve ? ) out of my reach inside the freezer compartment that I was hoping to avoid gutting for just now. Right now I am only supplying current to the hard start and compressor as a test without any other connections to the run capacitor, the line to the fan, and the line coming from the defrost timer that I found conveniently located behind the kick plate too late. I was thinking that may have been stuck in defrost mode but I did not know about the defrost timer then. I was concentrating my efforts on getting the coils as clean as possible considering the design of the thing. After about 20 minutes of running I reached in and placed my finger on top of the compressor and it was real hot, so I pulled the plug and figuring that may be because the fan is not running now and or the coils need even more cleaning. I touched the back wall of the ice box and the sheet metal felt cooler then room temperature but hard to tell without pulling the panel covering the evaporator coil itself. The other thing concerning the compressor is down in the very left hand corner of the left rear (left rear from back view) of the unit near the compressor is a very small oily residue. Oily to the touch but no smell to it. I just do not have the experience with compressors and refrigeration to know if this one is history. It really has been a learning experience. If anyone has any insights into this would really appreciate your comments. Personally I am beginning to suspect the compressor is gone or on its way out. If I could get six more months out of this thing would be a happy camper being the unit is 12 years old and only paid 200 bucks.

I should make another post for this but just want to add the kenmore upright freezer that we transferred the stuff we could save from the warm kenmore/amana refrigerator is kenmore/frigidaire (# 2539284213) upright freezer. It is turned to maximum on the temperature control but neither my wife or I recall ever turning the control. We bought this thing new from Sears about eight years ago and within a couple months of our purchase it quit running and whatever went wrong was covered by the warranty. My wife says they reimbursed us a 100 bucks or something for the food that went bad. I never paid much attention to that freezer and the repair tech may have turned the temperature dial to maximum and forgot to tell us to turn it back to 4 or whatever is recommended. The dial is in a bad spot and usually covered by food. Since we transferred food to this freezer I can not get the gel ice packs to get as rigid and cold as before when we kept those things always in the Amana that is SOL now. I've had a thermometer in there for 6 hours and it won't go below 32 F barely freezing. There is a light frost on the back panel there is a thin layer of ice on the bottom. The ice on the bottom has been there forever so I figured something leaked maybe and froze there. This freezer has the condenser coils somewhere up inside a "sealed " space and according to what I found out these never need cleaning. Now since I started reading refrigerator/freezer stuff last few days was wondering is the condenser coils really never get dirty. I noticed when I input the model # and looked for the condenser coil I think it said if the condenser coil is to be replaced it was supposed to be mounted on the exterior back of the freezer that is a smooth sheet of metal. I wonder if they found the internal coil not such a hot idea (no pun intended) after all, or is it for another reason. Thanks guys,

Sorry about the lengthy narrative to kick things off here but I needed some comic relief. Tom