Hi,

I now own my first house and I am a novice at appliance repair. I have been searching the internet trying to learn how to use my digital multimeter and trouble shoot the problem that I am having. The freezer is only cooling to 38 and the fridge to 42. There is no frost buildup on the coils and the gasket seals are good. The compressor is running and there is no clicking on the relay. The condenser fan is not coming on at all.

I applied the leads of my DMM to the terminals of the compressor. I went 1 to 2 then 1 to 3 then 2 to 3. Every reading was 0. When I went from the terminals to the metal compressor cover I got the reading of 1. The compressor and start really get very hot when running. Too hot to leave your hand on for more than a second or two. I don't know where to go from here. Any help would be most appreciated.

Cheers,

Dave

The following may help with your meter usage.

http://forum.appliancepartspros...continuity-ohmmeter.html

Here is my blurb on it.
If you do not own a meter, I would suggest you purchase a one. You can get a decent digital multimeter for under $20.00. You do not need fancy though it is nice if the leads are a couple feet long.
If it saves ordering one unnecessary part it has paid for itself and you end up owning a useful tool.
Most places will not let you return electrical parts so if you order it, you own it.
A couple things to watch when measuring ohms and continuity
1. Always remove power from the machine otherwise you could blow your meter.
2. Always disconnect at least one side of any device you are checking. This eliminates the possibility of measuring an alternate/parallel circuit path.
3. When checking for closed contacts and continuity use the lowest scale (Usually 200 ohms). Then try higher scales. This scale is 0 to 200 ohms so if the device you are measuring is 300 ohms this scale would show an open circuit which it is not, you are just measuring outside the scale's dynamic range.
4. When you start always short the meter leads together. This will tell you that the meter is working and if there is any 0 offset.

There is a good STICKY at the start of this forum about it's use.

[COLOR="Blue"]Every reading was 0. When I went from the terminals to the metal compressor cover I got the reading of 1[/COLOR].

You probably got 0 because you were using too high of a meter scale so the meter cannot resolve the low resistance. Just does not have enough digits so it rounds it off and 0 is the closest round off.

1 is infinite resistance (open). This is what you would see when you turn the meter on and the meter leads are not shorted together.
When checking for a short to ground use a mid rage meter scale 2K (2,000 ohms) or so.