"Refrigerator"

Replacing Fridge Shelf After Cleaning

Okay I have got a refrigerator shelf that this isn’t going to go in. Reason is kind of obvious.

It’s because it is backwards.

I didn’t put it that way. I found it that way and I started to fix it but then I was like well maybe someone needs to know.

Because if you took it out for cleaning or something like that and you wanted to put it back.You got to kind of lift it like that and there we go and it’s all set there.

These kind of go in like that and you lift it in front and it is a little bit of pressure. Tight, to get it in like so.

It’s a done deal.

Refrigerator Compressor Not Running Repair Video

Kung Fu Maintenance Shows refrigerator compressor buzzing won’t start fridge freezer stopped cooling repair video.

Oh, man. What such a nice, comforting sound. Now, all of the sudden, what’s that buzzing sound? Not good, and it’s feeling kind of warm in the fridge. I still have some ice cubes but it’s like they’re starting to melt. I’m going to pull out the fridge and have a look. It sounds like the refrigerator compressor is not starting. Okay, if you’re hearing that sound and what it is is the compressor in the fridge has stopped running so you’re going to want to unplug it, pull off the back panel here.

This cardboard here is actually useful to the function of the machine, so you don’t want to throw it away, or you don’t want to tear it off, or anything like that. You really do want to take the screws off and save it for putting it back on because it aids in the energy efficiency of the refrigerator. So I’m going to pull out all of the screws here and then, we’re going to look at what is the relay and the common start and run terminals on the refrigerator compressor. What I have is these starter packs. I’ll be taking it out.

If you’re taking care of multiple fridges, it’s a good idea to keep some of these starter packs on hand in case the fridge goes down especially if you have multiple varieties of types of fridges. If you have all the same brand, you can kind of stock the correct capacitor relay for your fridges, and you can just change that. If not, you can use these starter packs. The starter pack is kind of nice. It’s a three-in-one starter pack, and they come in different horsepower sizes. There’s a one-third to one-fourth horsepower. It’s a common size. And, I find that works for older refrigerators.

The black and the blue hot wires are another size. It’s a one fifth to one twelth horsepower, and this works, in my experience, better for newer frigs. What I usually do is stock both of them and if I have a fridge that goes out, then I’ll use the lower horsepower, one first, and I try that. And if that doesn’t work then, go with the higher one. A lot of times, if the situation is kind of you’ve got nothing to lose, you can, again, get the DR manufacture design relay for these. But sometimes, in a situation where you don’t want the food to spoil or you need it right away, it’s definitely nice to have these starter packs so you can get it going.

The design on these is not that easy to get into. As you can see, it’s pretty cramped quarters, pretty tight, a lot going on with the refrigerant tubing and everything, but it’s enough to get in there and get it done. The starter pack comes in two different sizes. As I was telling you, those are the most common and generally, will get you through just about anything you come across. So again, I like to stock one of each here. I’m taking off the little clip that holds the compressor cover on, holds this capacitor in place, and the wiring, the relay. There’s the capacitor. Pull the capacitor out, and again, you could just replace that. I’ve had some luck here and there with relays for air conditioners where I’ve been able to smack the relay and put it back in, and then it work pretty much. I haven’t had it go down since I did that, but I don’t have that much hope for this one here. I went ahead and tried it here anyway, but of course, it didn’t work out. But, it’s me. Putting it back in.

You’d think they’d tell you the horsepower rating on the refrigerator compressor itself or inside the frig, but they actually don’t. You really have to know what’s going to work out for you. And like I said, on newer fridges, the lower horse powers tend to work out, the one twelve to one fifth horsepower, the three-in-one starter pack; and for older fridges, the one third to one fifth. So again, you might start with a lower one and graduate to a higher one, if you didn’t, again, examining the capacitor.

I should tell you a capacitor can hold the charge in it even after the power is disconnected. So, you may want to discharge the capacitor and definitely avoid touching the leads of the capacitor after it’s disconnected. There are some capacitors that discharge through the motor windings, but I wouldn’t leave that to chance. You can watch my video on how to discharge a capacitor if you want to. Well, it’s not that easy to see, but there’s three posts on the compressor, the common, run, and start post. Here is the wiring [inaudible 00:06:14]. This is your two power wires coming in. We’ll be connecting those two. We’ll be cutting these off and wire stripping them, and connecting those to a three-in-one starter pack. And then, there’s the three leads that’ll go to the compressor itself.

Start in the run leads for the refrigerator compressor will usually be right next to each other and then, the common will be by itself. It’s usually in a triangle setting. So the common is usually on top. I think the common is a black wire. The extra nut and the red wire will be the run; and most often, it’s to the right of the compressor when you’re facing it. I think they did that so people would kind of understand it. And if you couldn’t read the common, run, and start on the refrigerator compressor, that’s what I would go with first on the refrigerator. And then, when you plug it in, if it buzzes and doesn’t start, just go ahead and unplug it right away; and then, you might have to switch the wires on that.

This particular refrigerator compressor, I could not see at all to tell the designation for the common, run, and start so I just did, again, the common, the black wire, to the one lead on top that was by itself. The red one, I did on the right side and then the start, which is sometimes the yellow wire or a white wire on the left side. This one gave me a bit of trouble putting the red run wire on. Again, this is all tight quarters and we want to be careful for sharp parts, and we want to avoid bending the refrigerant to the… Sometimes, you might have to move something out the way. Just, very gently, bend it, but you don’t want to bend it back and forth. It’s better not to bend it at all if you can.

That was about my best view there of common, run, start terminals. Okay, so here is now our voltage lines coming in the power lines. On the old one, it was labeled red and blue, which red and blue are usually switch wire designations. For a switched wire, either red or blue, whereas black is usually your straight hot that’s why I’m using wire strippers to cut it and strip them. It’s a good idea to use wire strippers. It prevents taking out any strands of the wire and getting a nice clean stripping of the installation rather than taking some of the wires with it. Polarity is not an issue on this, so the blue or the red can go to either side of the starter pack as it really doesn’t matter so… just delivering the power.

Twisting the wires together. Again, when you’re stripping off the wire, examine the cutoff pieces that you stripped off and make sure that there’s no wires strips left behind. If you’ve lost wire strands, make sure there’s no strands left behind in the stripped off portions because if your wire strands get stripped off, it can become a place where heat will built up too strongly, and it can burn the wire there. Anyway, I’m twisting the wires together. You can use a wire connector to link them together. They used to be called wire nuts. These days, they’re called wire connectors. I’m searching for one here. Just twist right on. And, you can kind of give the wires a tug to make sure it’s not going to pull out on you. But as long as you twist it together and the wire nuts are threaded on, you’re generally good to go. Now, we’re ready to plug it in and check it out.

Hey, nice, beautiful sound. It’s doing what it’s supposed to do. The compressor started right up. I could have probably put this back together first but I kind of wanted to verify that everything was good. It’s probably not a really good idea to be handling it with the power on, and you definitely don’t want to put it back in there with the power on; just too tight, and of course, the fan-rate spinning and everything else. You don’t want to become crispy fried. You don’t want to be blended either so you will not blend. Anyway, it’s up to you to find a creative spot to hang this on. It’s got this little clip on the side of it that lets you anchor it but again, not always an easiest thing to find a spot. I guess I was able to tuck the wiring around. I was actually able to hang it right on the compressor top cover itself which actually [inaudible 00:12:04] worked out perfect. The nice thing with that clip being anchored on there is that if you do have to move the fridge in the future, the whole deal isn’t just going to be hanging down where it can get munched.

So now, it’s clipped on. And now, we’re ready to put everything back together. We put the cover back on. And this cover is important to the function of the machine. It’s probably a good idea, while this was apart, to blow it all out, to clean it all out, but I’ll leave that for another story. Here is another look at that capacitor. And, if you wanted to use this three-in-one starter for a temporary fix and then, order the correct capacitor, you could do that. I’ve had pretty good luck with these starter packs. And that compressor, it could just be that that refrigerator compressor is just having such a hard time starting that it really needs the extra hard start kit that’s in the starter pack, so it really depends.

Again, I’ve got really good fortune using these, and haven’t had one go down after I installed it. So, I’m just going to leave one in place. Again, I can take the capacitor back and I could order that relay for that capacitor but I’m not too worried about it. Put everything back together. If you had your fridge plugged in, it’s a good idea to wait about five minutes so putting this cover back on is just perfect before plugging it back in. The five minute wait will allow the compressor’s pressure to equalize. Otherwise, the refrigerator compressor might not start if you plug it in too early. Now, we’re ready, and there we go.

Kung Fu Maintenance demonstrates how to get rid of ugly marks stains chips plus scratches on refrigerator wire shelf food rack shelves.

OK. I got some slightly discolored ugly food racks here.
Chipped off right here along this edge.

I already did it was like about ten of them right here. I already did them but what I have is these little bottles of white appliance touch up paint. Just awesome for stuff like this. Just really really simple to go along and get things cleaned up here. Kind of just real simply. Just makes a difference between it looking super old and super new.

Just the little things that make a big difference. Sometimes stuff doesn’t jump right out at you and say this is what is wrong but there is a subtle impression. Something doesn’t seem right. Sometimes it is loud and blaring what is wrong.

Sometimes not so much. Anyway. There it is. All nice and new. Good to go.

Kung Fu Maintenance demonstrates the KFM method for unclogging clogged condensate drains in refrigerators that are causing water to drip from the ceiling of the fridge.

We’ve got a clogged condensate drain line here. Fixed the fan motor, so that’s all set. That’s the first thing to check for if your fridge isn’t working, is to check if the fan motor’s stuck.

Now we’re going to need to defrost the condensate drain lain so that the water can drain properly and not clog up back there and create ice blockage. Because what happens is down here, you’ll get ice blockage. And that’ll block the circulation of the air from your freezer down into the fridge.

Removing Freezer Tray

It’s kind of funny that the longer screws go in the front in this particular model. Each model is a little bit different, so this is just giving you the general idea here of what you may be dealing with. This is a frost free refrigerator, so it has a defrost cycle.

Looks like it’s started to melt. A little bit of ice down here sometimes forms on the coils. We’ve got all kinds of ice buildup back here. You can see in the aluminum pan as well as around here. So we’re going to chip all this out. You want to be careful.

Chipping Out Freezer Ice

This particular fridge has all plastic parts, so it’s fairly easy to chip this stuff off. On other fridges you may have to take a different method to melt it all out. Because if it has aluminum back there, it’s easy to puncture the aluminum. And that may cause you to develop a refrigerant leak, so you want to be cautious of that, careful of that.

To defrost this thing, I used to microwave water and run that, pour that over the defrost once you’ve got this all chipped out. And it would take forever. Pour it in, and once it got warm, then vacuum it out. And then you repeat the cycle over and over. Pour it in, vacuum it out. Pour it in, vacuum it out.

I got a lot easier way, which is If you have a turkey baster, just to fill that turkey baster. And then squirt that in there. Blast your ice blockage out with warm water or hot water. I can show you an alternate method if you don’t have a turkey baster, because I don’t have a turkey baster with me all the time and you probably don’t have one with you all the time, either.

Ice Defrosting Steam

You want to avoid deforming the aluminum plate back here. It fits out nice and easy and you can see all our ice in there. This is where our condensate drain line is, right here. It’s just all plugged in. Break all this out.

Again, you want to be careful not to puncture anything down there. It’s one thing to get it done, it’s another thing to get it over done. You run this through your garbage disposal, that’ll sharpen up the blades. The ice is good for sharpening up disposal blades, bit of a double whammy.

This is our channel here. This actually looks like it’s broken apart a little bit. But it’s still functional, as long as it maintains its shape, just directs the air down there. Down into the fridge. You want to be careful when pulling these out to avoid breaking that.

If it did break, try to put it back together so that it performs its job function. You can glue them back together if you need to, if you did break one. One like this, it’s still holding its shape. It can still do its job.

Now what we’re going to do is take hot water and put it down there. Again, if you have a turkey baster, that’ll make this a lot easier. I’m going to show you a KungFuMaintenance trick here. What you do is take a water bottle filled with hot water and then take a knife, or I’m going to use my screwdriver, and just poke a hole in the top up here.

Poked Hole In Water Bottle Defroster Lid

Now we’re going to squirt the stream. Squirt a nice stream into the drain and I’ll use that to squirt it out as if it was a turkey baster. So just aim your stream in there. Squirt it out there.

Hot Water Stream To Melt Ice Clog

And once it gets built up a ways, what you could do is use a wet/dry vacuum to vacuum that out. Here goes a little noise from my wet/dry vacuum to vacuum this out here.

[VACUUMING]

I’m going to go ahead and widen up my hole here and see if I can make my stream a little bigger and a little more direct so I can aim it down there a little better. Oh yeah, that’s better. I’m just going to vacuum it out again.

[VACUUMING]

We’ll aim our stream right down there again, nice and strong this time. It appears we’re clear, so now what we want to do is dump another good amount of water down there. We’ll avoid it going in the fridge and just make sure everything drains really good and clears out really good just to prove that we’re actually empty and clear here. And you can see it going down.

Condensate Drain Clearing

Now our drain line’s clear and we’re ready to put everything back together. To put this back together, we’re going to put our aluminum sheet back in there, making sure we straight out anything that got bent. So here’s this piece right here, got bent. Avoid deforming this pan.

This slides up underneath the coils. The coils are back here, so you just want to pull these forward a little bit and press this into place. Then we’re going to reinsert our Styrofoam channel here. And now we’re ready to reset our freezer cover pan .

It’s got these feet back here that fit underneath. Deep channel right here, so I’ll just push it up into place. There’s always one out of place.

Now on this one, you’re going to think the short screws would be on front, but it’s actually backwards on this model. You just need to remember the way that it is on yours. Note how your screws go in and how your fridge works.

It’s probably a good time to clean this fridge pan and everything, but that’s another story. Back here, make sure that’s in nice and straight, and then our freezer channel goes in like so. And there’s two feet back here. We’re going to slip those in and then press it down, the whole thing gets pressed down.

So that is locked into place and you can’t pull it out. Again, each fridge is a tiny bit different but that’s the way this one is. We’ll set our screws back. And now we’re ready to install the freezer tray.

And these just insert into the two holes, and this you press into place nice and gently. And now our freezer is installed and we can put our ice trays back in. Might want to start with some fresh water there.

And we’re all set there. That’s how to fix a frozen condensate line. I set our temperature control back at about five, which is about normal for this particular one. Anyway, we’re good to go there, nice and clear.

Today, I’m going to be showing you how to do a scratch test on a compressor. And this is to prove that the compressor is indeed bad, so you’re not unnecessarily replacing a compressor when it’s not bad. This is a fairly simple test.

Air Conditioner Capacitor Discharge

What you want to do is go ahead and pull your disconnect and then discharge your capacitor, touching only the insulated portion of the screwdriver, bridging the leads. I think it good practice just to go ahead and discharge all the capacitors. I’ve got a video showing how to secure a dangling capacitor and make this a little safer.

Anyway, then what you want to do is go ahead and disconnect all the leads to the compressor, noting where they go. I pretty much know my system’s common is black, red is for run, and yellow for start, on the S. But if you need to write this down, go ahead and write it down or take a picture so that you can remember. Then go ahead and pull your leads off.

Hot High Side Refrigerant Line

Once all leads are disconnected, then you’re going to do what’s called a scratch test. Go ahead and scratch off a place on the compressor, usually on the top, so that all the paint is gone on that top portion. And then what you’re going to do is set your volt meter to ohms. So I’ve got my volt meter here, and setting it to ohms.

Air Conditioner Refridgerator Compressor Scratch Test

Verify that your volt meter is working properly by touching both of the leads together, like so. You should get a full sweep of the needle, showing zero or close to zero resistance. So this is pretty close, here.

Ohm Compressor Scratch Test

And then what you’re going to do is go ahead and put one lead on your common terminal, or any of the terminals. And then the other lead, you’re going to put on the space that you’ve scratched off on the top of the compressor. And you’re going to go to each of the leads, testing.

And what you’re doing is making sure that a wire hasn’t ground out on the compressor. And this one is showing that nothing’s wrong here. I’ll try to get you different view of this, here. I’ll show you the compressor here. So I’ll go ahead and set it to a higher ohm reading.

So you can see, you’ve got zero resistance there. We’re going to test to the lead, and then to the spot that we wore off of the compressor. And to each of the three leads. And according to this, we’re OK.

100 Percent Bad Compressor Proof

Kung Fu Maintenance lets you hear the snapping crackling sizzling popping noise coming from a freezer plus dripping trickling making water noises from a fridge in the defrost cycle.

OK, if you ever hear a sizzling sound like what you’re hearing here coming from your freezer, or a tiny bit of a trickling sound coming from behind the fridge, don’t worry too much. It’s just your defrost cycle. You can here it there. That’s completely normal as long as it goes way. It usually lasts a half hour or less. It’s not a big deal.

Sometimes you’ll hear a little bit of the trickling water, but what it’s doing is it’s melting the frost that forms on the coils a little bit. Over time, [INAUDIBLE] the crackling, sizzling, popping, tiny bit of dripping, dribbling. It’s completely normal.

Refrigerator Freezer

Ideal Temperatures For Fridge Plus Freezer

Kung Fu Maintenance discusses ideal temperatures for freezers and fridges plus best settings for refrigerators what should be at. IceScream YouScream We’ll all scream about bad ice cream.

I thought I’d show you my fridge and freezer thermometer, here. Not the easiest thing, necessarily, to read, but it does do the job. Turning it just right, you could see, right in the middle, it kind of blocks out the black line. But you’re really looking for the black line, right in the center.

This one, in my freezer, is showing about negative 5 Celsius and at about 18 degrees Fahrenheit. I’ve actually had it out of the freezer for a while, so that’s not a good temperature.

But I figured I’d also show you this. And this takes a while to adjust, so you’ll really have to close it in the freezer and leave it for a while or in the fridge for a while. But I thought it’d give a good opportunity to also go over your ideal settings for your freezer.

You really want to leave your freezer at factory settings, which is the center here. You don’t really want to adjust these for the cold to the coldest. I tell you, from experience, a lot of times you’ll get too much ice freezing up, and then blockage and all sorts of stuff.

And as much as possible– I’m using this fridge for storage– but you also want to keep your dial in the fridge down where the factory settings are, which is usually about 5. Of course, if you’re experience is something different, do what you’ve got to do and set it there.

But using a thermometer is a good way to go to get temperatures. For a freezer, you’re looking for 0 degrees plus or minus 4 degrees. So negative 4 or positive 4, anywhere in there, you’re good. And for a refrigerator, you’re looking for 40 degrees plus or minus 5 degrees, maybe even plus or minus 7 degrees.

Showing anything way off from there, you’ve got a problem. Water freezes at 32 degrees. The only thing that doesn’t freeze– or one of the only things that doesn’t freeze, I should say, because, obviously, freon and refrigerant has different freezing and boiling temperatures. But that’s a whole other story.

Water freezes at 32 degrees. The only thing that doesn’t freeze, food items. And again, I stand corrected. There’s other things that don’t freeze. But the main thing that doesn’t freeze at 32 degrees is ice cream. Ice cream probably freezes somewhere around 15 degrees, 17 degrees, someone in there, or 12 degrees. It’s probably dependent on the brand of ice cream that you’re getting.

So if your ice cream is getting soft, then your freezer temperatures may be off. And that may be a time to use a freezer thermometer to be able to show what your temperatures are. Again, you’re looking for 0 degrees plus or minus 4 degrees.

00:13 This refrigerator stopped getting cold.
00:15 You can hear the compressor is running.
00:19 You can also hear the first thing to look for is that the fan stopped running
00:25 perhaps the fan is stopped up
00:28 so
00:29 what we need is to take out this rack
00:33 by pressing up here
00:36 slipping this out there are two screws at the back that hold this fan channel in place
00:42 take out the two screws there
00:46
00:51 and this is one of the first things to look for when you have a refrigerator that is stopped getting cold
00:56 look for a stopped fan motor first
01:00 now this may not be all that is happening
01:04 lift up the fan channel here and pull it out
01:07 There
01:10 now you can see the fan, that it is spinning too slow
01:14 Normally it would be rotating faster
01:18 Most likely what it is is that it is rubbing
01:23 the fan blade is pressing
01:24 see how it was touching against the back
01:27 that’s the reason it was spinning to slow
01:29 so I’m gonna pull it forward a little more
01:36 it’s safer to
01:39 turn the power off but I am gonna get this over
01:44 There
01:45 I removed the whole fan
01:48 Now press this on and it’s out a bit more and doing as it should. Before it was keeping the air from being able to blow down into the fridge and the freezer wasn’t blowing the air around properly
02:13 on the backside of the fan channel it has some dials for adjustment
02:14 generally you don’t need to change these too much
02:17 but if you desired your freezer to be chillier or needed the freezer to be colder you can change this dial by pulling out and turning that, each model has it’s own types of workings. Ok now that we havethe fridge repaired in theory what we need to look at is
02:34 below the pan to see if any ice is built up which there most likely is and the freezer condensate drain line is most likely plugged
02:40 How we can tell is if there is water dropping
02:43 below here
02:44 which there is so we will need to clean that drain out
02:47 but I’ll leave that to the next vid.

Twelve reasons why schools, restaurants, hospitals, hotels, apartment complexes, and now homeowners are choosing stainless steel refrigerators and appliances.

Stainless steel is easy to clean.

Stainless steel is resilient to stains.

Stainless steel can be easily disinfected.

Stainless steel is very durable.

Stainless steel is not easily scratched.

Stainless steel can be polished to shine.

Stainless steel compliments almost all varieties of colors and Interior design styles.

Stainless steel looks especially good with brushed nickel or black accessories and appliances.

Stainless steel has a professional appearance.

Stainless steel  is not expensively priced.

(. . . at least not in my store, Kung Fu Maintenance Supply and Appliance)

Stainless steel can be re-grained if needed.

Stainless steel can withstand heat.

(Such as the placement of a hot pan or pot.)

Stainless steel has a large variety of matching stainless steel small appliances and accessories.

Light fixtures, ceiling fans, coffee makers, toasters, faucets, microwaves, dishwashers, ranges, pots, pans, washers, dryers, counter tops, sinks, and more come in stainless steel and/or stainless steel hybrids.