How to Recharge a Refrigerator Compressor

it's been about a week since I last worked on the fridge and I did end up letting the compressor run for about two full hours but it still didn't cool so clearly this is more than just a compressor not starting issue now with that being said we do know that the relay was bad so I went ahead and I bought a new one which I have with me right here well actually this is a used new one I bought this off of eBay for about $30 but it's an oem part so it's an exact replacement and importantly it has that continuity between the common in the line I'm going to show you that right now so with one probe into common and the other one on the line you can see that the resistance is about zero ohms it's very close so this relay is good so with this relay the compressor should start up just fine we shouldn't have to use the extension cord and the alligator clips like we did before but even when that happens we know that the fridge isn't going to cool because we know that the compressor runs so the question is why isn't the fridge Cooling and I believe the answer is that we probably have a refrigerant problem this fridge is almost 20 years old and there's probably a leak somewhere in the system so what we have to do is we have to recharge it and the way that we're going to do that is we're going to use this little piercing valve right here now the way this piercing valve works is there's a little copper pin that is going to pierce one of the copper lines that carries the refrigerant you can see that pin coming out right there now once we pierce the line we'll then have a point where we can add refrigerant to the system and hopefully once we do so the fridge will actually cool so let's see in addition to the piercing valve we're going to need some tools in order to get the refrigerant into the system I'll put links to all these tools in the description but let's just go over them briefly so that we know what we're working with the first thing we need is a vacuum pump that's because we need to evacuate the system make sure there's nothing in it before we put the refrigerant in so we're going to use this in order to do that next we need the refrigerant this is just straight R134a there's no additives there's no sealers this right here is the p piercing valve that we'll use to open up the R134 a can and this right here is the scale that we're going to use to weigh the can we're going to use the weight to let us know how much refrigerant we've dispensed so that we can properly charge the system now this next step is optional but I'm going to add some UV die to the system and that's because I think there's probably a leak this UV die will leak out and in the future I can use a UV light to hopefully find the leak and then fix it and lastly we're going to need a set of manifold gauges this connects the can to our piercing valve so that we can get refrigerant into the system so now that we know what we need let's do it before we can install our piercing valve we have to decide what line are we going to install it on most compressors are going to have three lines attached to them the first two are the suction and the discharge and on my fridge these lines are in the back these lines run into the body of the fridge and they're actually not the lines that we're interested in we're interested in the process line which was the line that was used to put refrigerant into the fridge at the factory in the first place this line on my fridge is located right here it's a very short line that has a crimp at the end and that's the line that we're going to tap into in order to get refrigerant back into the system one quick note about this piercing valve before we actually put it onto the fridge it came with two adapters here that allow you to fit it to different diameter pipes now you're going to want to measure the outside diameter of the pipe in order to match it up with what the instructions say and in my case I have a 5/16 inch diameter pipe so I'm going to want to use the little adapter that I have right here you'll just have to measure your own pipe in order to figure out which adapter if any you need to install the piercing valve we need to separate it into its two halves by removing the three screws that hold it together we're then going to install the adapter you may or may not need to do this and then we're going to slip it over the process tube and tighten the screws back down with the screws tightened we're now ready to pierce the tube and we're going to do that by tightening the inner Screw As far as we can okay we're now ready to attach the vacuum pump we're going to connect the blue line of our gauges to the piercing valve and the yellow line will connect to the vacuum pump we're now ready to open up the system for the first time the way that we're going to do that is we're going to turn the center screw on the piercing valve one full turn to the left that's going to retract the needle slightly then we're going to open up the blue side on the charging manifold we're going to leave the red side closed and finally we're going to turn the vacuum pump on and we're going to let it run for at least 30 minutes okay it's been about an hour since we first took the vacuum pump up so now what I'm going to do is I'm going to close the system up I'm going to close the piercing valve and I'm going to let it sit overnight then I'll check the pressures again in the morning and that'll give me an idea of how bad this leak is okay it's the following day it's been over 12 hours so let's open this piercing valve and see if we still have vacuum and we do so if there is a leak it's likely quite slow so hopefully I can get away with just refilling it with refrigerant and then the fridge will work again again let's do it the first thing to do now is to disconnect your yellow line from the vacuum pump and your blue line from the piercing valve on the fridge I did that off camera but just make sure that when you do it you close the piercing valve all the way before you disconnect either line if you don't you're going to lose your vacuum and you're going to draw air into the system the next thing to do is to prepare our refrigerant we're going to do that by placing this piercing valve onto the can just make sure that before you mount the valve you check that the valve on top is turned all the way to the left and the needle inside is fully retracted because we don't want to actually pierce the can until this is firmly seated once you've checked that's the case you can then thread it onto the can until it's tight and at this point we're now ready to turn the knob on top all the way to the right and Pierce the can next we need to purge our manifold gauge of air in other words we need to replace the air in these two lines with refrigerant we're going to do that by connecting the yellow line to the can and once it's tight we're going to open it ever so slightly for about 3 seconds 3 seconds should be enough to get the air out of this line now we can connect our Blue Line back to our piercing valve now we're going to add the UV die you don't need much and all you need to do to get it into the system is just pour it directly into the yellow line that right there is all you need now let's get the can onto the scale and make sure that it's zeroed yep at this point what we have to do is we have to turn the piercing valve on the fridge a full turn to the left and then turn the fridge on because we want the compressor running as we charge it then we'll open up our refrigerant can and watch the scale closely until we've dispensed the right amount which is about 7.6 o finally we'll close everything up disconnect the manifold gauges and hopefully when I check back in about an hour the fridge will be cold let's see what happens that all right it's been about 2 hours since we recharged the fridge and I can tell you that it's hot right now according to my thermometer inside the temperature is about 83° but inside of the refrigerator we're down to about 24 in the freezer and 58 in the fridge so I think we can call this one fixed one final update it's been about 2 months since I recharged the fridge that was finished in Late July it's now late September and since then everything's been working perfectly and just to prove it to you let me show you the temperatures exactly where it should be if you learned something please like And subscribe

Channel: The Escondido Experiment

Views: 9,846

Keywords: How to, DIY, Low Refrigerant, Fridge Not Cooling, Refrigerator Not Cooling, Recharge Fridge, Recharge Refrigerator, Recharge Refrigerant, Fix Fridge, Fix Refrigerator

Id: Xaj98f-cGPI

Length: 11min 46sec (706 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 06 2024