electrical troubleshooting

[okierob]

Hay folks, i have an upright freezer that has a problem with not shutting off.

I have checked to see if the defrost heater is stuck , but it does'nt appear to even work.I manually advanced it, comp/fan stops,I have voltage and zero amps at the terminal under the freezer. But the diagram shows a T-stat in series. I dont know if the stat is defective or the element since i cant physically see either one.
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Another thing, it does'nt seem to be blowing air as strong as it should be from my memory.

I'm thinkin partially iced coil which would hamper the cooling ability. I had some pop sikles that unthawed in the door.everything else is still froze.

Can yawl think of anything i might be missing.

 

[okierob]

Also i have unhooked the compressor to just run the blower to see if it will improve the airflow.

Only other thing that might be the valves in the compressor bypassing a little.Unit may be around 10yrs old.

1-defrost T-stat
2-defrost heater
3-blocked coil
4-faulty valves
5-restriction

any other thing it could be?
compressor is running normal amperage

 

[fireater]

our old frost free Inglis fridge did that.... run constantly.... would freeze up... turned out it was developing a slow freon leak... had guy out to look at it he couldnt find anything wrong except low on freon. topped it up ran great for 2 more years then the leak got worse.. we bought new fridge...

 

[okierob]

I also suspected that,unfortunatly there are no service ports to hook gauges to. right now is is running about 24.4* according to my digital thermocouple.

 

[Dieselbreath]

The freezer on our refrig did the same thing. I manually defrosted it after finding the coils all iced up. (used a hair dryer) It worked OK for a few more days than started freezing up again. Turned out the defrost heater element was bad. Replaced it & it's good as new.

 

[CAROGATOR]

My freezer did the same. found that the bottom fold out box was overloaded, shoved in too far. pulled out a little to let air circulate and worked great. back wall must not be blocked(inside wall).

 

[rtallent]

I have been working on freezers 30yrs and the most common problem on frost free freezers is the defrost heaters burn out causing frost build up and restricts the airflow. This causes the temp to rise and then it begins to run constant which compounds the problem. Another problem is if it is fan cooled underneath and is dirty is can cause the synthetic oil which is thin to boil.This will stop up your cap tube and restrict the refrigerant and you lose cooling capacity and it runs constant again compounding the problem. If it is a GE you can bet its the defrost heaters. They are spring type heaters inside glass tubes and are not as durable as a calrod type heater. Let me know more and I will help you if I can.

 

[okierob]

this is a kenmore. no fans underneath, everything is inside the cabinet.

just got it cleaned out and shut off so i can get to the controls.

 

[Anonymous-0]

looks like the defrost heater is broke. coil iced up as suspected. ohmed the heater and showed open.