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Post by birkie on Mar 3, 2018 5:03:33 GMT
I picked up a DR2 in a small mountain town in West Virginia a few days ago. It was missing the freezing block, but had three shelves! The cabinet looked to be in OK condition  It had apparently sat on Facebook marketplase for six months. I only discovered the existence of Facebook marketplace last week. During that siz months, the people who owned it were using it in their shop, and it accumulated a little bit of ice on its lovely pig evaporator, LOL:  I like to remove the tops and put them in a crate before transporting these machines, and had brought an engine hoist in order to make quick work of it. Unfortunately, the top was frozen to the cabinet! Caught in a bit of a bind, and without sufficient straps to transport the fridge upright, I was forced to put it in bed of the truck on its back. I gingerly drove back, cringing all the way. When I got home, we started to work on getting the block of ice reduced enough to get the top off. Since it was just me and my wife (it took three guys to get it onto the truck), we ended up holding the top level with the engine hoist, freeing it by pulling the cabinet away:   It was easy from that point on!  As it melted, we discovered a frozen coke bottle in the evaporator.. The cabinet is a bit odd. It has the "art deco" hinges I associate in my mind with post-1930s cabinets, but not a matching latch. To mount the shelves, it has little L-shaped metal hooks. There is a serial number, but I have no idea what manufacturer it is. Does the J in 5-J mean Jewett??  The machine had a rebuild tag, from 1943 (coincidentally, that is the year my grandfather graduated from college, and went into the navy). The heater tested good, and drew 19W according to my kill-a-watt (that's 1W higher than the 20W heater I ordered from Nordic Sensors for my DR3). Motor windings had good ohms, and infinite resistance from any terminal to the shell. After heating it up a bit, it fired up. The condenser heated evenly, and the float got warm. It looks like it survived the trip OK. It hardly rattled during pulldown - it just got a little metallic chatter that actually went away toward the end of pulldown. It was actually a lot more like my DR1 than my DRA2 in its character. I don't know if that's due to the high-ish watt heater, whatever improvements they made in rebuild, or something else. Here is the loudest it ever got: We're pretty happy! |
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Post by Travis on Mar 3, 2018 5:50:11 GMT
I just knew you were up to something since you were so quiet. That looks to be a 5 cu ft porcelain cabinet. The latch may have been the newer style when new, but maybe not. The hole pattern is the same. That uses the smaller of the two sizes of hardware.
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Post by birkie on Mar 3, 2018 13:01:11 GMT
I just knew you were up to something since you were so quiet. Lol, coldspaces said I needed more fridges to help stop over-analyzing them. I guess it's working  Funny story, though. The guy who was selling it said that it was posted on facebook marketplace for sale for the past six months, and on display at their shop. Maybe a couple people looked at it that whole time. Shortly after I called and offered to buy it, he said about five people from far away places messaged him inquiring if it was available, or asking to contact them if the sale fell through. He thought there might have been a recent article published in a ladies magazine or something. I think it was the post where I listed a few local Facebook Marketplace finds, linked to the entry, and mentioned I was picking it up this week He was really nice and honest, and glad to close the sale so people would stop messaging him about it, lol. Oops. I feel slightly bad for the inconvenience, and told him to look up this forum and post in the classifieds if he finds another one. |
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Post by ckfan on Mar 3, 2018 14:19:27 GMT
Wow, what an amazing find and story. I can’t believe he started getting calls from all over the place. Very interesting. I think this poor machine deserves the “Keep on Truckin’” award. That is the most ice I have ever seen. Is the cabinet water damaged? Poor thing. It’s on and off cycles must have been days! This really makes me want to get my DRA running. Time to get out the big boy tools.
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Post by coldspaces on Mar 3, 2018 14:48:00 GMT
Wow I guess it is working, you are gonna need more than one drum of 124 at this rate.
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Post by birkie on Mar 3, 2018 14:50:06 GMT
Yeah. I don't know if it got some mojo from it's 1943 rebuild or what, but it has steadfastly done whatever has been asked of it without complaint. When I ran it in its crate, the garage temp was in 40s... hardly any rattle at all. Do get that DRA2 working. I love it's story as well |
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Post by birkie on Mar 3, 2018 14:50:55 GMT
Wow I guess it is working, you are gonna need more than one drum of 124 at this rate. Lol, the 30lb canister I have in the garage is starting to look awfully small |
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Post by solarmike on Mar 3, 2018 16:02:45 GMT
Man that is a great story... Glad someone on here got it...
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Post by Travis on Mar 4, 2018 3:31:43 GMT
I'm a tiny bit jealous of anyone getting a nice old DR that's not me. It's nice that you have a little DR family going there.
I sent Zach various DR parts to reproduce today. It's going to be great not to fear a missing cord!
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Post by birkie on Mar 4, 2018 15:41:49 GMT
I'm a tiny bit jealous of anyone getting a nice old DR that's not me. It's nice that you have a little DR family going there. I sent Zach various DR parts to reproduce today. It's going to be great not to fear a missing cord! We've been sort of informally aiming for "one of each" of the various generation monitor top models.. still have yet to get a CA or a ball top, though. But still, it'd be hard to resist rescuing an old DR if one ever pops up locally, particularly if it is not working but otherwise nice. I'd hate to see them scrapped or mutilated. We'd be interested in power cord parts, we only have one cord between four machines. Also, while I don't know a whole lot about metal fabrication, at some point I'd like to investigate what it would take to get freezing blocks made. There are plenty of online services for doing CNC milling or 3D metal printing, and I think even a couple places that do small-run extrusions. No idea if any of those would be cost effective yet, though. Is the cabinet water damaged? Poor thing. Sorry, I missed this. It looks like the ice separated one end of the upper of the quarter round piece on the door. That end was a bit black the surface felt a little punky. I'm actually away travelling for a week or so, but if my memory serves me right it seemed like that piece was the only obvious water damage. |
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Post by sheeplady on Mar 15, 2018 1:06:40 GMT
I picked up a DR2 in a small mountain town in West Virginia a few days ago. It was missing the freezing block, but had three shelves! The cabinet looked to be in OK condition It had apparently sat on Facebook marketplase for six months. I only discovered the existence of Facebook marketplace last week. During that siz months, the people who owned it were using it in their shop, and it accumulated a little bit of ice on its lovely pig evaporator, LOL: I like to remove the tops and put them in a crate before transporting these machines, and had brought an engine hoist in order to make quick work of it. Unfortunately, the top was frozen to the cabinet! Caught in a bit of a bind, and without sufficient straps to transport the fridge upright, I was forced to put it in bed of the truck on its back. I gingerly drove back, cringing all the way. When I got home, we started to work on getting the block of ice reduced enough to get the top off. Since it was just me and my wife (it took three guys to get it onto the truck), we ended up holding the top level with the engine hoist, freeing it by pulling the cabinet away: It was easy from that point on! As it melted, we discovered a frozen coke bottle in the evaporator.. The cabinet is a bit odd. It has the "art deco" hinges I associate in my mind with post-1930s cabinets, but not a matching latch. To mount the shelves, it has little L-shaped metal hooks. There is a serial number, but I have no idea what manufacturer it is. Does the J in 5-J mean Jewett?? The machine had a rebuild tag, from 1943 (coincidentally, that is the year my grandfather graduated from college, and went into the navy). The heater tested good, and drew 19W according to my kill-a-watt (that's 1W higher than the 20W heater I ordered from Nordic Sensors for my DR3). Motor windings had good ohms, and infinite resistance from any terminal to the shell. After heating it up a bit, it fired up. The condenser heated evenly, and the float got warm. It looks like it survived the trip OK. It hardly rattled during pulldown - it just got a little metallic chatter that actually went away toward the end of pulldown. It was actually a lot more like my DR1 than my DRA2 in its character. I don't know if that's due to the high-ish watt heater, whatever improvements they made in rebuild, or something else. Here is the loudest it ever got: We're pretty happy! Once again, my oak flooring saves the day.  |
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Post by birkie on Mar 15, 2018 1:36:09 GMT
Once again, my oak flooring saves the day. Yes, dear |
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Post by elec573 on Mar 15, 2018 2:53:07 GMT
Keep us posted Birkie
like seeing another one rescued .
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Post by birkie on Apr 16, 2018 11:38:02 GMT
So, I took advantage of the great weather the past few days (in the low 80s) to put the DR2 back on its cabinet and see how it does for an extended period of time. Some observations so far:
- At the warmest setting, it sustains the cabinet around 35F in upper 70s ambient temps.
- This one has really looong cycles - 1 hour on, 2 hours off for a 35F cabinet at 70F. When the temps push 80, off times go down to 100 minutes or so. I can't imagine what the cycle times were like when it was running with its whole evaporator encased in a cubic foot of ice when we picked it up!
- It pulls down the interior of evaporator to 0°F at the end of its run cycle, and kicks on when the evaporator is 24°F or so. This is measured with a temperature probe on the inside of the evaporator, nestled next to the freezing block and frozen in place. I wanted to measure the outside too (freezing solution), but I think the probe fell off.
Temps are going to be colder in the next few days, but we'll keep it running for the next week or so.
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Post by csulaguy on May 21, 2018 4:40:28 GMT
Holy shit that's a lot of ice! I'm guessing the door seals were shot, and this was set to the highest setting? And I hate to hijack your thread, but is there anything I need to know about a DR? I might pick one up in the future on a trip to NC. A little pricey at $450, but it's in great condition and works (as you know, I only have CKs now). |
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