Compressor worries

[scalebowler]

Isnt the evaporator supposed to turn the liquid into a gas?

[johnieG]

It sounds like a rather basic explanation at best, but in priciple , This is a capillary tube system with the evaporator coils running around & attached to the inside walls of the tank/liner, at the point were the capillary tube delivers the high pressure liquid freon, it does "flash" into a low-pressure liquid which also begins to evaporate to a vapor state, but it is still a mixture of "boiling" liquid freon & gas at that point, now as it is pulled along through the rest of the eveaporators tubing, more & more of the liquid mist/freon comes into contact with the copper walls & absorbs heat from it and the liner, which in turn takes heat out of the inside air of the tank, thus cooling the contents within.

Yes, if it is undercharged, it will not have enough freon left in the system to cool the entire evaporators length, you need to put a test thermometer into the unit in contact (taped) to the wall close to the point the thermostats sensing tube is in relation to the liner & monitor the actual temperature, if it's too warm, it will never trigger the thermostats cut-out point/temp & you may have an undercharged system, if it IS cold enough, then your thermostat may have the wrong type/tempurature range, or
an out of box defective t-stat, or it's not positioned correctly to detect the liners actual temp.

[sliderchris]

At last!
My Ideal 55 slider is working properly!
The refrigeration guy who looked at it found the compressor to be working fine and
the freon charge correct. He swapped thermostats with one he had which didn't help.
He figured it had to be the probe not in the right spot to sense the evaporator temp.
After I returned home,I removed the right vertical breaker strip from behind the loading door
and reached in and felt that the protective tube was still firmly attached to the back of the liner.
I then took the thermostat from my Squirt slider(that runs flawlessly at 35-38 deg. year round)
and swapped it over.That fixed it!
After about 72 hours, I have a steady inside temp of about 32-34 deg.I could turn the thermostat to a warmer
setting but that would be unnecesary as I have found the problem. The compressor cycles on and off as it should.
I have written down the part # of the thermostat (it's one I pulled out of a junk refrigerator some time ago)
and will try to find one identical to it. As someone posted earlier, these kind of irritating problems can drive
a person to drink, which ironically, is the very reason the soda machine needs to work correctly.
Here's to a cold one.
Chris.   

[sliderchris]

Hi all,
I just couldn't leave well enough alone.
It was bugging me why that one thermostat worked and all the others didn't.
So I pulled of that breaker strip again and looked in behind the liner with a mirror
and flashlight. As I stated earlier, the t-stat sensing tube was firmly attached
but I noticed the last section of the evaporator that runs next to the tube had become
detached.This would mean the tube would'nt sense the actual evaperator temp. because
of the air gap separating them (I think!).
I then took one of my t-stats (that I thought were faulty) and physically wrapped the
probe around the evaperator next to the tube. I haven't tried it yet (will mess with it over the weekend)
but will let you know what happens. I'm thinking the same thing has happened in my Squirt machine and
the t-stat must have a higher cut-out  temp that allows both machines to work.
Chris.