Hello,
Last night my wife told me that the ice cream in the freezer was not rock hard. My first thought, which child left the darn door open. Later in the night I checked and noticed the suction I’m used to was not there. So I closed the door tight and waited 5 mins. I returned and still no suction. I then noticed the items in the freezer were still cold, but not frozen hard.
I checked the compressor and it was running, hot to the touch but running. The cold and hot lines from the compressor were cool and warm. I then unplugged the unit and let it sit for 5 mins and plugged it back in. I hear the compressor start and the lines are cold and hot. Then after about 30 seconds I noticed the lines got cool and warm.
I visited this site and checked the seal is ok, no light leaking out at night. I have now since grabbed my multimeter and tested the Relay and plug kit, after removing the compressor run capacitor and it came back with 3.8 ohm. I then tried to test the capacitor I removed and It does not read.
Please advise what steps I should take next to identify the problem and should I bring the capacitor to a shop to have it tested?
You will need to measure compressor current draw on the compressor’s run winding during startup. The compressor should be allowed to cool down first so that the measurements will be more clear. The current meter clamp should be placed around either Line or Neutral from the wall cord leading to the compressor. You may see high current at first (when you felt cold and hot from the two sides) then you might observe the current slowly dropping (current should remain steady and can have small variances #see Note). The dropping current happens with age of the compressor. The coolant is able to bypass the compressing vanes so the compressor doesn’t work as hard (draw as much power). This affects the high and low pressures needed to allow the coolant to change state. As the unit runs pressure from the two sides bleed over causing the efficiency of the coolant to drop. This is observed by the warm and cool on the sides.
Note: if the current remains steady from startup then the capacitor may be providing a voltage drop great enought to slow down the compressor. This would affect coolant efficiency. Generally capacitors affect a compressors ability to get started.