Comment on hot-wired a fridge mystery component. Nothing happened. What is it?
bitfucker@programming.dev 4 days ago
It seems like I cannot find a picture of your component (if you ever posted any). If it is metallic looking, it is probably a thermal cutoff of some sort. The wikipedia article focuses on the fuse-looking one, but there also exists a flat metal plate looking one. The connection is usually normally open so if the temperature on the loop is ever too high, the motor (compressor) will trigger. The normally closed connection one is for motor overheat protection. That kind is usually placed/glued to the stator body, so if it ever gets too hot, it will stop the motor instead.
I posted a pic in a reply but the component is hidden behind the metal plate.
I wonder if it is a thermal fuse, then I don’t know what would warm the plate. It has a coil of refrigerant which you can see in the pic… just one loop of coolant. I’m baffled that it’s enough to cool the whole fridge compartment. As far as getting warm, I wonder if the compressor could somehow run in reverse and push hot refrigerant through the coil to defrost things?
I’ve seen the pic. So the plate is not the component? I thought the whole plate was the component. In that case, if it is a small metal plate like any of this, then it most likely is a thermal cutoff.
It’s not running the compressor in reverse necessarily. It just used to sense when the temperature of some point has reached some threshold. Remember, a high temperature on the cold side could also be used to trigger the compressor to cool down the fridge.
The mystery component is hiding behind the plate. If I follow the two white wires from the thermostat, they go behind the plate and make a loop that attaches to the backside of the plate.
I mean, you could also say the plate is a mystery to me as well. I’m quite baffled by this fridge because it’s nothing like the videos I’ve seen on fridges. The plate must be cooling the fridge compartment because there is no vent coming from the freezer.
Yeah, that’s a broken heater. A broken heater sign is usually high resistance or good ol disconnect. It being in parallel further reinforces that. This is a common schematic for domestic refrigerators.
diyrebel@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
resistence measures at 14.15 kΩ
bitfucker@programming.dev 4 days ago
Ahh, probably a broken heater then. If it is a normally open thermal switch, it should not have that low of a resistance