|
Post by hilomonster on Jul 18, 2016 21:02:33 GMT
The only bummer is that the pics are in reverse order. It was fully frosted just after the bleed and then 10 hours later the right header became exposed. I wish it were the other way around.
|
|
|
Post by ckfan on Aug 29, 2016 16:17:42 GMT
Ok, I have yet another update on the CA! I just got a new camera, thank God, and have decided to film videos of my fridges running to post on YouTube. The pictures I took are with my crappy phone camera, I know, they are bad. Anyways, I wanted to start with the CA and tried to film a run cycle of it from a dead stop. It took a lot longer than I thought it would. In fact, after about an hour it still wasn't anywhere near shut off. I know that it takes a while for a unit to cool down a warm cabinet but I didn't think it would take this long, especially at setting 1. I noticed that it was rattling a bit even after it had been running for a long while. It wasn't rattling a lot, just a little here and there. I then thought back to the last time I purged it, the 4th of July. Up to this point I had purged it twice for about 2 hours each session. On the last session I stopped purging simply because I had been doing it for so long, didn't want to let out refrigerant if I didn't know I was in fact letting it out, and of course the fireworks were coming up so that takes precedence. ANYWAYS, I decided to give the bleeding one last go. I went at it for just over two hours last night. It seems like I am doing no harm to the machine, if anything the signs are all pointing to the positive. I am just floored that there could be that many NCGs in the system. At one point near the end I opened the valve a little too much and for sure smelled MF right away. I closed it back up, waited and continued and did not smell it again. The frost lines looked reasonably good this morning so I'm assuming that I didn't bleed off an excess of refrigerant. I have a bad sense of smell so I can't tell if I'm letting little trace amounts out while doing a normal bleed or not. Here is some data that I collected. At first, there was about a 12 to 10 degree difference in temperature from the top coil to the bottom one. After my 2 hour bleed this was lessened to about a 5 degree difference. Of course that is what my infrared probe was telling me. At a few points it was showing a difference of only 3 degrees but that could have been an error. It seemed that with each bleed I was getting a diminished return. However, through the whole process you could see the heat moving down the coil. At first the temp dropped off around the third coil then tapered off on the last one. At the end, the temperature mainly stayed constant through the 9 coils and dropped off on the last one. I'm assuming this means that there were in fact, more NCGs to bleed off. Here is what temperatures I ended up with for each pass of the coil. 1st Pass: 112.2 F 2nd Pass: 112.2 F 3rd Pass: 112.6 F 4th Pass: 112.2 F 5th Pass: 112.8 F 6th Pass: 112.8 F 7th Pass: 112.6 F 8th Pass: 111.9 F 9th Pass: 111.5 F 10th Pass: 107FAs you can see, by the end of the 2 hour bleeding session, most of the coil was the same temperature within a degree or two. My goal was to get the last stubborn coil to hold true to that pattern but it just wasn't budging much. At one point my meter did read 110F on the last coil but that may have been a fluke since I couldn't repeat that reading reliably. After a few hours I timed the cycles. It isn't fantastic like the Flat Top but it is promising. 5:49 on, 10:34 off. I'm assuming that it will be better this afternoon once it has settled in. Speaking of settling in, I have included three pictures of the evaporator. One of them shows the right header which was taken this morning but I filled in the approximate area that was frosted while doing the purge. The others are a picture of the left header and the right header after they settled in overnight. The temp in the cabinet on setting 5 was 34 degrees this morning. I took my infrared probe and measured a range of 26 to -4 degrees on the evaporator with about 8 degrees being the average. Who knows how accurate that is, I need to get an actual wired probe to test it properly. I just thought that you all would appreciate the data that I collected after another 2 hour purge. This means that I have purged this machine for about 6 hours total since I have bought it. I think that is crazy but let me know what you all think! Signed, A happy CA owner! P.S. Look for some interesting videos to be posted shortly! I may make it a weekly thing! I'm wondering if I should do warm cabinet cycles and just edit the video to a proper length or just film a "normal" cold cycle. My reasoning for filming a warm cycle is due to the extra noise (exciting noises!) at startup. I will also show my sweaty face and talk a little about each machine. Cheers! To view the photos in this post, please follow this link: drive.google.com/open?id=0B8_jm7K-ahMaR0N5STBQYlNTLW8
|
|
|
Post by ChrisJ on Aug 29, 2016 20:55:34 GMT
Throw a pan of hot water in it, make it work.
Hot water = a lot of boiling, and vapor taking up more space so you're going to see a much higher frost line.
Then, when things calm down it'll go back down. Loading a lot of food in the cabinet and or warm ambients will have a similar effect.
P.S, I've put an aluminum ice cube tray of water so hot I couldn't hold it without pot holders in mine and it damn near froze it in 15 minutes. I was speechless.
|
|
|
Post by ckfan on Aug 29, 2016 21:02:54 GMT
Throw a pan of hot water in it, make it work. Hot water = a lot of boiling, and vapor taking up more space so you're going to see a much higher frost line. Then, when things calm down it'll go back down. Loading a lot of food in the cabinet and or warm ambients will have a similar effect. P.S, I've put an aluminum ice cube tray of water so hot I couldn't hold it without pot holders in mine and it damn near froze it in 15 minutes. I was speechless. Chris, are you just wanting to see how the frost line will react to a heavy load? If so, I will try that tonight. I will fill up an aluminum tray with hot water and will take a before and after picture. I'm also going to time the cycles since it has had time to settle in.
|
|
|
Post by ChrisJ on Aug 29, 2016 23:06:58 GMT
Throw a pan of hot water in it, make it work. Hot water = a lot of boiling, and vapor taking up more space so you're going to see a much higher frost line. Then, when things calm down it'll go back down. Loading a lot of food in the cabinet and or warm ambients will have a similar effect. P.S, I've put an aluminum ice cube tray of water so hot I couldn't hold it without pot holders in mine and it damn near froze it in 15 minutes. I was speechless. Chris, are you just wanting to see how the frost line will react to a heavy load? If so, I will try that tonight. I will fill up an aluminum tray with hot water and will take a before and after picture. I'm also going to time the cycles since it has had time to settle in. Yep. Frost line should go way up
|
|
|
Post by ckfan on Aug 30, 2016 19:51:28 GMT
Chris, thank you for the hot water suggestion. I should have put two and two together and realized that under load that the frost line should go up. It makes sense. I did three tests with my friend Drew last night. I timed the on and off cycles again, measured the evaporator temperature more accurately, and put a pan of hot water in the evap and watched the frost line. First, the cycle times...Just about the same as yesterday. 5:02 on, 10:53 off. After reading an older post about CA cycle times this seems about right, especially for a chilly 34 degrees and nothing in the cabinet or evaporator. I'm assuming this means that all seals are decent and the machine is pumping the heat out like it should be. These are actually the best times that I've ever had with this machine. Second, the evaporator temperature. I realized that I have an analog probe thermometer for testing the vent temp for car A/C systems. I took it and froze it to the evaporator and came back 30 minutes later. At first I was disappointed when I read 20 degrees. Once I read it the machine kicked on and I noticed that it started to drop. I then waited till the end of the cycle and looked again. Now it was at 10 degrees. I just went to the service manual for the CA machines. Holy wow! It says that at setting 5 the temperature range as measured from the bottom of the cooling unit is anywhere between 10 and 20 degrees F. Boy am I glad I had it on setting 5! That just makes me chuckle. I even included a pic of that clipping out of the manual and a picture of the temp probe reading 10 degrees to prove it. Looks like the control is spot on after all these years. Third, the hot water test. I was messing with my percolator last night as well and ran a batch of water through it. I filled up an ice tray pan with the not scalding but not comfortable water and froze it to the evaporator. I left it for 20 minutes and came back. The machine never got noisy but the condenser sure got nice and warm, not hot. I also noticed that the condenser was more warm towards the bottom than what I am used to as well as the float valve. I guess that last bleed did some good. Before it would have just been warm on the upper half. I opened the door and was a little disappointed. The water was frozen on the bottom and the sides but not in the middle. That was impressive being that it was so hot. However the frost line was exactly the same as it was before. I chatted with my friend for a while and came back an hour later. This time it was a different story. The water was completely frozen and lo and behold the frost line had gone up! You can see the picture from my post before the loading, the first picture here is after the loading, and this morning picture is the last one. Pretty neat. I'll let the CA experts be the judge but to me all signs point to this machine being as healthy as an original CA can be. Two things have left me curious though... 1. Why in the heck did it take so long to bleed out the gasses? With the frost lines and performance that I'm getting I couldn't imagine that I was bleeding out anything other than NCGs. Heck, there could be more in there for all I know. I have no clue what the bottom pass of the condenser temperature "should" be in relation of the others but I couldn't get it bellow a 5 degree difference. Maybe that is good enough? 2. After this last bleed the "bloop bloop" sound during the off period has vanished. I found that odd. So, in short...the frost line jumped when under load, the temperature of the evaporator is spot on with the manual's specs, and the cycle times look promising. It is quiet though. It has never sounded this quiet and healthy before. I also noticed a good drop in watt draw. Whereas before it was drawing anywhere between 170-150 watts it is now drawing a scant 140-125 watts! I really have grown an attachment to this fridge! To view the photos in this post, please follow this link: drive.google.com/open?id=0B8_jm7K-ahMaR0N5STBQYlNTLW8
|
|
|
Post by csulaguy on Jul 21, 2018 10:10:09 GMT
Yes, you remove the slotted screw first. It will give you access to the bristol keyed screw below. Don't worry, the slotted screw is not the sealing screw, so it's safe to remove. I should've read here first... though I did read the official CA service guide - "Some of the sealing screws were soldered and can be broken loose with a large screw driver, or the solder can be softened with a Monitor Test heater." Or in my case, corrosion resulted in me having to drill the damn thing out. Thankfully, I did get to the Bristol screw, and I was able to bleed out NCG. Ironically, just as soon as NGCs are all done (according to the manual stating that the float temp is equal to the high condensor coil, or close enough anyways according to my infrared thermometer), the machine stops and the warning flag on the front is red (this is a CA-1, btw). It does start back up, but it trips again. I'm going to try it again to see if it stays running, and see if the cabinet starts to pull down. Bleeding NCGs on a CA-2 was fun and easy! Thanks Cablehack for your video!
|
|
|
Post by csulaguy on Jul 21, 2018 10:13:09 GMT
...I had to push quite a bit to get it open but I got it open. A little too much at first, it blew a lot of oil out but I quickly dialed it back to a slight burble. It really was easy after that. I'm being lazy by not reading all 5 pages right now. I learned my lesson after doing the CA-2 first; a few gentle taps with the handle of a screw driver worked for me. I got it nice and loose on the CA-1, to where I could crack it open gently, as opposed to having all the oil blow out by trying to loosen it with my hands alone. One other thing - is methyl formate supposed to have a sweet, pleasant odor to it?
|
|
|
Post by timeswelding on Jul 21, 2018 10:34:54 GMT
MF smells like a sweet solvent. Smelling it actually gave ma a sore throat and migraine.
|
|
|
Post by csulaguy on Jul 21, 2018 12:22:06 GMT
MF smells like a sweet solvent. Smelling it actually gave ma a sore throat and migraine. That probably was MF that I was smelling. My taste buds/scent receptors must be screwed up though, because the first thing that comes to mind is artificially flavored strawberry cheesecake. And for the record, I purged NCG out of my CA-1; before, it would maybe sweat or get a little cool. Now, after maybe 20 minutes of purging, I actually have a frost line from tank to tank, and even without an "oil conditioner" (aka heater), it runs as quiet as any of the three MTs inside!
|
|
|
Post by timeswelding on Jul 21, 2018 12:26:37 GMT
It's most likely my senses that are fueled from 40 years in a welding shop. By the way, please get a crank case heater in that CA
|
|
|
Post by csulaguy on Jul 21, 2018 18:33:50 GMT
Will do. Which is a better outfit to order from? Florida, or Canada? I meant to call either last week and didn't get a chance to. If it were cold here, I would've waited until I got the heater, but it's been over 100 during the day, and last night was one of the coldest nights last week - 75. Most nights have been over 80.
|
|
|
Post by timeswelding on Jul 23, 2018 15:40:38 GMT
Will do. Which is a better outfit to order from? Florida, or Canada? I meant to call either last week and didn't get a chance to. If it were cold here, I would've waited until I got the heater, but it's been over 100 during the day, and last night was one of the coldest nights last week - 75. Most nights have been over 80. Canada
|
|
|
Post by rick on Jul 28, 2018 2:56:02 GMT
I bought two from Canada. It will take awhile if you order from them. If you like I can mail you my spare and once your order comes in you can send one back to me.
|
|
|
Post by csulaguy on Jul 28, 2018 4:43:31 GMT
Or I could buy yours from you, and you just reorder with them. I need to see if they're any cheaper in quantity. Shame we couldn't all do a group buy. I honestly only want it now for the DR1's I'll be picking up in the next few weeks.
|
|