Refrigerator Issue

[feeez]

This is kind of a "repost". I had added this to one of my older postings but got thinking that may have not worked the best.... here it is

Repost,

We got in the water (finally) this past week. I got the fridge up and running and everything seemed AOK, my beer was cold!!! After it had been running for a day I noticed that it would come on, run for about a minute, stop and then resume running. It would eventually turn off properly (I could hear the "click" of the thermostat). As time went by this "short cycling: got more persistent to the point that it was on and off, on and off. I decided to shut it down as I did not want to leave the boat with the fridge doing that for days on end thinking that it would not be good for the compressor.

Cheers
Fraser

[Viper]

I'm thinking a couple of things; either the compressor is okay and it's simply reacting to what a bad t-stat is telling it to do, or the compressor is failing and cutting out. The t-stat would continue to tell it to work. When this cycling gets short enough, the compressor will fight to start under high pressure which usually causes the thermal cutout to kick in. It's like unplugging a fridge while it is running, then plugging back in a second later. It will try to start but usually cuts out a few times until pressure decreases before it's able to run again. Hot wire the t-stat and see if it'll stay running.

[mjk1040]

It will also short cycle if it's low on Freon. Time to measure it up for the new replacement I'm afraid. Or spend big bucks at the repair shop?

[feeez]

I contacted Nova Kool support and the contact there was very helpful. First thing he suggested was to pull the fridge, and disconnect the fan from the controller. A common problem as the fan ages it draws too much current and can cause the controller to shut down and restart. Seem to work fine during this test. I replaced the fan ($20) from a computer store and everything seems OK, an added bonus is the fridge runs way way quieter now. I still think there is new fridge in our future sometime but for now we will run with it.

Cheers
Fraser