On Christmas day (naturally), the refrigerator got warm even though the bottom freezer was fine. (That was nice on the one day a year you can't buy ice anywhere). A couple of searches online and some YouTube videos later, I found that the most likely cause is that the coils behind the freezer are not going through a defrost cycle, thereby blocking the flow of cold air to the upper refrigerator section. The repairman videos show them completely removing the ice maker and the back panel of the freezer to access the coils. But then I noticed this red knob down at the base of the fridge:
This red knob only turns clockwise and I suspected it was a manual control and/or timer to cycle between the cooling (compressor running) and the defrost stage. So I turned it clockwise until the compressor - which had been running non-stop - turned off and let the fridge sit for two hours.
After that time, I turned it clockwise again until the compressor kicked in and cold air started to come out of the vent in the refrigerator. Now it's likely that this timer is either broken or just got stuck in the cooling cycle, which means every couple of hours I'll have to manually set it into defrost mode. But this beats putting everything on the backyard deck in camping coolers.
3 comments:
You can also fill up pots & pans with snow and put them in the 'fridge as well. That's the trick I used when power went out a few years ago (just under 24 hours, didn't lose any food).
I did the YouTube trick to fix my snowblower last year (and twice again just last week) - the two belts were fine (auger & drivetrain belts), as were the springs for the pulley parts of each. The drive shaft would spin but the right wheel wouldn't spin. The problem - the shear bolt connecting the wheel to the driveshaft snapped off (yeah, I beat the shit out of this snowblower - 302 c.c. engine = 17 horsepower). This shear bolt works just like the shear pins on the auger; if they snap off, the auger axle spins but the auger blades just sit there. Same thing with the driveshaft but you have to flip the snowblower on to the hood and take off that bottom skid plate to get to all that stuff.
Oh, man, I tightened up my augur belt but then I was getting bad scraping against the ground. I need to adjust the side guides, which I've never done in 27 years.
Go to eReplacementParts.com (straight outta Midvale, UT 84047) and put in your snowblower's model number. It'll suggest some repair kits. A few years ago I loaded up on auger & drivetrain belts and all the springs in those two mechanisms. I bought the shear bolts (for the drivetrain, 1/4" diameter and 2" length) at the hardware store because they cost $.34 each! The shear pins (auger) were right there, so I got a box of those as well.
If your auger's hitting the ground, check the horizontal axle of the auger and see if a) the bolts that go through the side of the auger hood / housing are all in and b) check the skid shoes / plates on the bottom of the same auger hood / housing. Either one (missing bolts and / or skid shoe adjusted too low) are my best guesses at the bottoming out.
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