DRB3 from Royersford, PA with stuck compressor
Apr 25, 2018 1:18:17 GMT
Travis, ckfan, and 1 more like this
Post by birkie on Apr 25, 2018 1:18:17 GMT
I recently found an ad for a DRB3 in southeastern Pennsylvania, and brought it home. What especially caught my eye is that it still had two shelves, its freezing block, and ice trays! I've never seen the DR ice trays in real life. They even had the aluminum cover, and all the ice dividers. I'm eager to try them out and make bona fide DR ice using the equipment designed for those pig evaporators.
www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/953857608112852
If you look closely at the picture, you can see that it was in a basement with very low ceiling. As a bonus, the bottom halves of the rear legs were missing; rusted from the bottom up. It was resting entirely on the front legs with its back leaning against the cellar wall. It was wired into a special outlet dedicated for the refrigerator - its cord was nailed to the joists with with the kind of steel clips that were were commonly used with cloth house wiring. It really looks like that machine had been in the basement since at least the 1940s.
We ended up putting it on a set of pallet forks in order to roll it out of its little basement room and into an area of the basement with a slightly higher ceiling. We had just enough room to lift the top off with an engine hoist when the legs were removed. When we first started lifting it, the whole thing (top + cabinet) started lifting up. The seal had practically welded itself to the cabinet. After working at it a little, it peeled itself off and we were able to put the top into its crate. The seller's son and friends then simply carried the top up the stairs, then wheeled the cabinet up on a hand truck.
It was kind of prescient that Travis had mentioned pallet forks being really handy a couple days earlier.
I got it home and found it has the tiniest wattage heater I've seen in any of our DRs; only 12-13W. I plugged it in for a while, flicked the switch. The lights dimmed and all I heard was a humming from the windings...
The windings measured OK:
Start-Run 8.3
Start-Common 5.3
Run-Common 3.3
It was 22K to from the windings to ground; poor, but acceptable.
I bypassed the start capacitor and tried starting it with the run windings jumpered to the mains, but had the same results.
Then I switched the start and run terminals to the compressor so that it'd run backwards. After a couple tries, I heard movement! It sounded funny running backwards. Finally, with it wired up normally, I flicked the switch and it came back to life. I didn't let it run long as it hadn't been plugged in to the heater very long, but it got the evaporator frosty rather fast.
The cabinet is an all steel G-75. I would have thought that the "75" meant 7.5 cubic ft, but that's clearly not the case. It looked like a 9 cu ft cabinet. After measuring the interior, it's just over 9 cubic feet. The walls are 4" thick.
So overall, I'm pleased!
www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/953857608112852
If you look closely at the picture, you can see that it was in a basement with very low ceiling. As a bonus, the bottom halves of the rear legs were missing; rusted from the bottom up. It was resting entirely on the front legs with its back leaning against the cellar wall. It was wired into a special outlet dedicated for the refrigerator - its cord was nailed to the joists with with the kind of steel clips that were were commonly used with cloth house wiring. It really looks like that machine had been in the basement since at least the 1940s.
We ended up putting it on a set of pallet forks in order to roll it out of its little basement room and into an area of the basement with a slightly higher ceiling. We had just enough room to lift the top off with an engine hoist when the legs were removed. When we first started lifting it, the whole thing (top + cabinet) started lifting up. The seal had practically welded itself to the cabinet. After working at it a little, it peeled itself off and we were able to put the top into its crate. The seller's son and friends then simply carried the top up the stairs, then wheeled the cabinet up on a hand truck.
It was kind of prescient that Travis had mentioned pallet forks being really handy a couple days earlier.
I got it home and found it has the tiniest wattage heater I've seen in any of our DRs; only 12-13W. I plugged it in for a while, flicked the switch. The lights dimmed and all I heard was a humming from the windings...
The windings measured OK:
Start-Run 8.3
Start-Common 5.3
Run-Common 3.3
It was 22K to from the windings to ground; poor, but acceptable.
I bypassed the start capacitor and tried starting it with the run windings jumpered to the mains, but had the same results.
Then I switched the start and run terminals to the compressor so that it'd run backwards. After a couple tries, I heard movement! It sounded funny running backwards. Finally, with it wired up normally, I flicked the switch and it came back to life. I didn't let it run long as it hadn't been plugged in to the heater very long, but it got the evaporator frosty rather fast.
The cabinet is an all steel G-75. I would have thought that the "75" meant 7.5 cubic ft, but that's clearly not the case. It looked like a 9 cu ft cabinet. After measuring the interior, it's just over 9 cubic feet. The walls are 4" thick.
So overall, I'm pleased!
