My garage fridge tried to become a sauna and took the compressor with it

Last month in my shop in Tulsa, I fired up the old 1957 Frigidaire I've been nursing back to life for the neighbors' garage. Ten minutes in, I heard this weird hissing, then the whole back panel started steaming like a kettle. Turns out the defrost timer was stuck, which melted the drain line, which flooded the compressor compartment, and the motor locked up at 2:30 PM on a Saturday. I ended up replacing the timer and drain pan with parts from a 1962 model I found at a flea market for $14, and she's humming cold again. Has anyone else had a stuck defrost timer fry something else in the same unit, or is that just my luck?

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finley_flores283d ago

My buddy Dale over in Broken Arrow had the same thing happen with his 1949 Kelvinator last summer. He left it running in his shed and went to the lake for the weekend, came back to find the whole compressor covered in this sticky black sludge from a melted drain line. The defrost timer had welded itself shut on the heating cycle, and it cooked the wiring harness so bad the insulation just crumbled when he touched it. He ended up having to rewire the whole thing with parts from an old washing machine timer he found on eBay, and he said it took him three weeks of evenings just to figure out the sequence. Funny part is, the fridge itself still cools fine now, but the smell of burnt electrical tape never really goes away no matter how much you clean it. So yeah, it ain't just your luck, that stuck timer can take out a whole chain of stuff you never even thought about.