Ah, gentle reader. It started out so promising.
The day we left for Branson last week, that is, late Sunday morning, my beautiful wife was preparing to roast some pecans in the oven when she heard a pop, and the oven did not heat up. Ah, heating element again.
You might remember the saga last year:
To be clear: Apparently, this part shipped from St. Louis, Missouri, two days later (December 28), and:
- Arrived and left the carrier facility in St. Louis twice.
- Arrived in Kansas City on January 1, and then left the facility twice.
- Arrived in Springfield facility January 2, last Thursday, twice.
And there it sits. It is still scheduled to arrive by Wednesday, after I ordered it and twelve days since it shipped from St. Louis. Which is a three hour drive away. For some reason, it was routed through Kansas City for a week.
I guess I did not follow-up on that experience, but that particular part was shipped from St. Louis unpadded in a 1″ tall cardboard box which arrived bent, and the heating element in it was bent 20 degrees itself. So, unusable. I was able to return it even though the Amazon seller was a Ukrainian(!) company shipping from St. Louis or something–probably used parts from a junkyard or something. But they gave me a refund, and I got a heating element from a US-based (maybe) source and installed it.
Well. It lasted a year. But I ordered another from the same seller on Amazon (ending my tweehad against them for the moment)–getting ready to leave for the week, I felt too rushed to look at appliance parts sellers themselves on the Internet, and it was only when I was in Branson that I thought I hope I didn’t just order from the Ukrainian company again. But it came properly packaged and intact.
And since I had already done this and because it’s basically two 1/4 bolts and two screws to attach the leads, I had the oven up and running in under a half an hour.
So, on Sunday, I decided to crack open the refrigerator. Again.
Pretty much since we got the refrigerator, it would rattle when the compressor/evaporator fan stopped. But late last year, it started getting louder and rattling longer, so I figured I would take a look at it. Which means I would have Nico take a look at it.
A couple of years ago, I successfully defrosted the frozen drain line from the frost-free freezer, so I was unafraid.
I’d done some research, and the things on YouTube (which featured far younger refrigerators than this one, which is 26 years old and has metal parts in it) indicated it might be dirty coils or ice buildup on the coils leading to the fan nicking the ice. It might have been motor bearings. We cleaned it out, and it looked as the fan was running smoothly, but it did rattle when running. The shaft holding the fan on had a couple millimeters of give where it could go into and out of the motor that far. I guessed that it would be something we could live with whilst I researched maybe replacing the fan and/or motor.
But it seemed like the fan was running more frequently than previously. Several times an hour, it rattled for the length of the runtime. After I closed it back up, my wife said it sounded different. Perhaps I left the sheet metal on the back a little loose? After dinner, I thought to look at the temperature controls to see if maybe they might have changed. And the freezer was set to the absolute lowest setting. A-ha! I thought. When I tried to dial it up, though, it resisted and then popped. But now the fan was permanently on. Not good.
So, after a couple hours of listening to the beating of his tell-tale heart rattling fan, I had us move the contents of the 26-year-old refrigerator to the 45-year-old drink refrigerator behind the bar downstairs while we explore our options (buy a new refrigerator with an expected life of 10 years).
Not without some self-doubt, gentle reader, not without some self-doubt. My father’s handy angel on my right shoulder encourages me to fix it (and expresses silently doubt that I can), but that might involve a cycle of ordering a $60 part, nope, that’s not it, ordering a $60 part, no, that’s not it until I listen to the devil of modern disposable culture on the left. So, yeah, we’re getting a new refrigerator.
Next internal conflict: Do I keep this refrigerator to try to fix it in my spare time? Well, no. The garage does not have room for it. And maybe I should actually get into the habit of taking care of things before I get these ambitions. So, no, they’ll haul it away and either recycle it or fix it and resell it. Which I could do myself were I so inclined, but history has shown I have not been so inclined.
Maybe the theme of the year should be Get away from the damned desk and take care of things.
At any rate, I have ordered an extra heating element for the oven. Which might end up cluttering the garage and its museum of parts for appliances Brian J. fixed but then got sick of and replaced (with several dryer wheel kits for an old Whirlpool dryer and tub suspension rods for a Samsung washer).
And, wait a minute. Does the exhaust fan motor sound different?
