Westinghouse 102-MD not working. What to do?????

[jenkine]

I have had this mid 1960's machine for about 10 years.  Working fine until a couple of years ago and it quit cooling.  Already spent over $100 in appliance guys and still not fixed.  One said, the evaporator fan was bad and it had a coolant leak but nobody up to fixing it.  Should I just sell this as is and buy another vintage machine?  I live in Nashville, TN and don't want to spend another $65 service call with no results.  Thanks for advice.

[Jim]

What exactly is occurring with the machine when you attempt to operate it...?
Does it begin to cool within 15 minutes of being plugged in or not?
Does it generate any loud or unusual noise that was not present when operational?
Can you visually see both the evaporator fan, located in the cooling compartment, and the condensor fan, located below next to the compressor, are functioning and spinning properly...?

Almost forgot to Welcome you to Soda-Machines.Com ! ! !

[90grad]

Welcome to the site!  I have a Westinghouse 102.  You won't be able to see the evaporator fan, because it's underneath a protective shroud in the cooling compartment.  However, an easy way to check to see if the evap fan is running is to turn the thermostat to the OFF position and plug the machine in.  The evap fan should still run, although the compressor and compressor fan will be off.

[jenkine]

thanks for the replies and for the welcome.  One of the guys that worked on it, unscrewed the refrigeration deck so you can slide it out a bit.  The evaporator fan runs but you have to start it manually with your hand after you plug it in and then it seems to keep running.  I have let it run for 6-8 hours and it just runs and runs but does not cool.  The air blowing out the back of the machine which I assume should be warm if it were cooling is not warm.  The compressor seems to be running as well.  The appliance guys ticket said it needed a new evaporator fan and had a freon leak?

[90grad]

You can place your hand on the compressor and tell if it's running, as you should be able to feel the vibration (careful, it can get hot).  Shortly (within a minute or so) after the machine is running, you should be able to see some frost building up on the coils around the evaporator.  With the door open, all the coils won't frost up, but some will.  

Changing the evap fan in these machines is a little tricky.  The reason being Westinghouse used a two-piece motor, which is unique to their machines.  The replacement motors out there today are only one-piece.  The problem deals with the bracket required to hold the motor.  Check out this link...
http://soda-machines.com/discussions/index.php/topic,7252.0.html.  
This is a thread on the very same topic a few years back.  I posted some photos in there on what I had to do to replace mine.