TIL: A dead freezer compressor can look totally fine from the outside

I spent three hours last Thursday tearing apart a Whirlpool freezer that wasn't cooling. Checked the thermostat, the defrost timer, the start relay, even pulled the back panel to inspect the evaporator fan. Everything looked normal, no obvious burn marks or broken parts. I swapped out the capacitor just because I had a spare, still nothing. Finally broke down and put my multimeter on the compressor windings themselves and got an open reading on the start winding. That stupid thing looked clean as a whistle from the outside but was completely dead internally. Whole job took me almost four hours when it should have been a 30 minute diagnosis. Has anyone else wasted a whole afternoon on a compressor that looked perfectly fine?

3 comments

3 Comments

hollyc9228d ago

My buddy Dan had the exact same thing happen on a fridge he was trying to fix for his sister. He checked everything, the condenser coils were clean, the fan spun fine, and the relay clicked like it was supposed to. He spent the whole Saturday chasing ghosts, even called me to ask if I thought the defrost timer could cause the compressor to not kick on. After two days he finally called a repair guy who told him the compressor had an internal short, looked brand new on the outside but was fried inside. Dan was so pissed he just bought her a new fridge and swore off ever touching another compressor again.

riley_taylor27d ago

Holy crap, that is wild! An internal short in a brand new looking compressor? I wouldn't have guessed that either, you think you can at least trust the big parts to be good. @patricia_schmidt14 your water heater breaker story is basically the same kind of hidden gremlin, it's like the universe just doesn't want people to fix their own stuff. Seriously though, Dan had every reason to be furious, spending two days on something that was doomed from the start. I get why he swore off compressors, you can't really win against a part that looks fine but is secretly broken.

patricia_schmidt1428d ago

Lol @hollyc92 reminds me of my buddy who replaced a water heater three times before realizing the breaker was bad.