Buzz, click, buzz

Refrigerator & Freezer Repair
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1

I have a problem similar to what others have posted but I have done much more debugging and it is still not clear to me what is wrong.

A little background first:
For the last month or so I have been hearing a new noise from the fridge. It sounds like a click, then a buzz, then after about five seconds, another click and silence. At first I thought the ice maker had changed its sound but later found out it was not.

So this morning the machine was on and was not cooling anymore. I pulled it out from the wall and pulled off the front grill. Of course there was a massive amount of dust clogging the cooling coils underneath and also behind the unit. After vacuuming up the dust the fridge was able to cool for a while but then the sound returned and cooling diminished.

Diagnostic time:
I pulled of the back panel and determined the click-buzz-click was coming from the electrical components on the side of the compressor. I looked up the parts on this website and found that it was a "Compressor starting device" that was making the sound.

After doing some Google searching on this I found this nice article describing the components, what they do, and how to test them: [U]http://tech.akom.net/archives/31-Getting-your-refrigerator-to-run-without-a-start-relay-while-you-wait-for-the-part.html.[/U]

I removed the "Compressor starting device" pulled it apart and measured and inspected all the sub components. Everything looked fine with no sign of burning. The capacitor measured correctly (15 uF). The relay (overload cutoff device?) was conducting as was the thermistor (PTC). I measured the resistance across the terminals of the compressor and found 4, 5, and 10 ohms between the pairs which seemed proper given the webpage I linked to above.

Dilemma:
Yet the problem persists. So given that all the components look good yet the machine still goes into the click-buzz-click mode, how do I figure out what is wrong? Is it worth it to just buy the "Compressor starting device" to see if it fixes the problem. It seems like these devices don’t go out of spec, they just die so I am not sure if. But if the compressor is the problem then the whole thing is junk (right?) so it is cheap to at least try the "Compressor starting device".

Thoughts?

3

The ptcr device should measure between it’s terminals around 5 to 10 ohms cold.
If higher, order a new one, if ok, you have a hard starting compressor, that will eventually fail.

4

richappy said:
The ptcr device should measure between it’s terminals around 5 to 10 ohms cold.
If higher, order a new one, if ok, you have a hard starting compressor, that will eventually fail.

richappy,

I saw your thorough article at http://forum.appliancepartspros.com/general-talk/6149-replacing-compresor-start-devices.html. Would you recommend changing to a longer running PTCR if I have a "hard starting compressor"? Is this a risky thing to get right?

Also, I noticed from Maytag’s webpage that they warranty their compressors for 10 years. If this is the case then I can get them to replace it since it is about 5 years old. So I would not want to do anything that would void this warranty.

5

You can try a ptcr device WR07X10051, measures about 5 ohm cold. Will increase starting torque and will not harm the compressor. Worth a try, cheap enough.
Whirlpool bought out Maytag, so I would check your warranty and call, they might just replace it, but probably not, and use of this device would not void the warranty.

6

richappy said:
You can try a ptcr device WR07X10051, measures about 5 ohm cold. Will increase starting torque and will not harm the compressor. Worth a try, cheap enough.
Whirlpool bought out Maytag, so I would check your warranty and call, they might just replace it, but probably not, and use of this device would not void the warranty.

I ended up just buying a whole new starter unit (PTCR, Klixon, and cap) for $30. I thought I would just make sure this part was back to spec and then if it started to act up I would know for sure that I had a hard starting compressor. So far (2 days) it has worked without problems. Only time will tell if it continues to hold up.

By the way I did measure the resistance of the old PTCR and it was about 5.5 ohms. So I never could find any component that looked bad on the bench. But perhaps that was because I was making my measurements when the components were not being stressed.