The fridge is the star of this ad on Craigslist.  I've never seen this model before.  It has my favorite SR logo.  If I had the room, I'd grab it.

Posting a picture here for the archives.

This was a very good refrigerator that was built in the 1962-4 era, this was a time period that Whirlpool really started to hit their stride of building great refrigerators that continues to this day. But if you are considering putting a Frost Free ref into daily use that is this old you should first get a windmill to supply cheap power. LOL. And if you are a very good refrigerator technician you can change out the compressor, fan motors and defrost timer to make it considerably more energy efficient but you will still have a 50 year old ref. Unlike many of the cool 50 YO washers, dryers and DWs that are being found most refs this old have been running all 50 years of their existence and you will likely have interesting serious problems keeping it running properly.

I think this fridge would be more efficient than its equivalent bottom freezer model.  Top freezer models typically were/are.  If it has the same defrost system as a BF, not only is there a heating element on the evaporator, but the freezer floor is also heated in the depressed areas that channel defrost water to the drain, which is located nearly in the center of the freezer floor.  The floor heaters often failed, and Sears provided a retrofit kit that consisted of a trough mounted below the evaporator with a flat tongue-like covered extension from the bottom middle of the trough that routed the water directly out to/over the floor drain opening.  The entire trough assembly was heated by flexible cording that was connected to the same terminals behind the liner trim that supplied power to the failed floor heater.

This retrofit system worked well.  It had to be installed on two early 60's Coldspot bottom-freezer models that my sister owned.  One was installed by a pro, the other one I did myself back around 1980 since I recognized the symptoms and knew the retrofit was available.  I can't say whether it used more or less power than the floor heater.  

BTW, my first attempt resulted in connecting the trough heater to the terminals that operated the interior light instead of the floor heater.  I guess in a way, that would have provided lightning fast old-school defrosting -- with the door left open. 

These were very solid performing refs in their day, but they not only use an excessive amount of power they are also the reason that No Frost refrigerators got a bad reputation for poor food preservation, running 70% of the time and for the way they heated up kitchens in warm climates. The freezer floor of the Sears TF ref was just a stamped piece of aluminum with  the evaporator coil directly under it and pressed into the evaporator coil was a 600-700 watt heater. This heater was turned on twice a day and heated this whole area to at least 50F and much warmer in some areas [ many customers reported saying it was hot to the touch if they caught it in a defrost cycle ] needless to say it didn't do the frozen food sitting directly on top any good.

The thing that does in these refs as time goes on is this evaporator sits in a galvanized steel pan and it gets rusted pin holes in it as time goes on [ Frigidaire has the same problem with both their TF and BF and upright freezers models from 1958-about 1970 ] this leads to a big mess when the defrost water keeps leaking into the insulation below for years, it is very difficult to fix. WP did not have this problem with their BF and upright freezer models.

As mentioned the bottom freezer version would be even a little worse in terms of energy use, mainly because of having a bigger freezer section and having the colder freezer section near the hot condenser, pre-cooler and compressor. And Phil R is correct that his Frigidaire is probably a good deal more economical to run that a WP built FF ref of this vintage, the FD has a static condenser and to FDs credit they almost always were more economical to operate that most other brands.

111 the single best thing to make an older ref like this more efficient would be to replace the compressor, the compressor in this older ref consumes at least 350 watts of power when running compared to just over 100 for the same capacity compressor today. From there you can reduce the condenser fan motors consumption from about 40 watts to 5-6 watts but using a state of the art new ECM fan motor, likewise the evaporator fan M can be changed from 25-30 watts to about 4-5 watts draw. The twice a day timer can easily be changed to once a day by changing the timer [ I did this hundreds of times over the years ]. If you wanted to be a little more clever you could do as my Brother did years ago and use a 7 day timer and have the refrigerator only about twice per week, he and his partner did this for over 10 years on their primary ref [ a 1966 WP TF model ] Other things that could be done would be switching off some of the anti-sweat heaters if you lived in a dry climate and in the case of a ref like the Sears CP in question that has only fiberglass insulation you could pull the liner out and replace much of the fiber-glass with foam slabs of insulation. 

But as this Cool Old Sears ref stands it easily uses FOUR times the power of a new 16 cubic foot ref and would not keep frozen or fresh food nearly as well. And since WP went to their current ref designs 20 years ago [ all foam cabinets and doors ] these refs are holding up much better than the 1960s-1970s ever did, I have little dough that the current simple TF models will easily last in excess of 30 yeras if given reasonable care.

That is indeed an ice bin.  Lay a tray on top of it with open end facing down and use the lever to loosen the cubes so they drop into the bin.  That is why you see those tabs on the ends of Frigidaire ice trays from the period.  I have always wondered what type of stress this activity placed on the freezer door hinges.

Phil, yes the ice trays were supposed to reside on the freezer floor (see the ad below).

My Turquoise 1961 fridge had it's compressor replaced with a piston-type Tecumesh compressor. This was a modification that Frigidaire technicians often did in Canada as Frigidaire started to install Tecumseh compressors on many of it's Canadian models in the mid-1960s and many TEC AE compressors have GM Frigidaire parts numbers! It works well but it seems to be quite a job to fit there!

The only thing I don't like about my fridge that had been converted is the sound it makes. Not that it's noisier than my other fridges with the Meter-Miser but the sound isn't the same and it bothers me. 

Ralph, the freezer doors and hinges on these fridges are quite solid, the parts that are subject to stress are the lever mechanism on the ice server, the ice server itself which could crack and the ice tray separators/mechanism that can distort... Frigidaire sold ice tray wax in spray cans to help removing ice cubes from them but I never used it! I either put some water under the trays before releasing them, or better, I release them just after the defrost period!

Love this Ad Phil R. it really shows what they were building and selling. Even though I like being the Combo Guy my favorite is #11 the all [ most ] all refrigerator, I still wish separate refs and freezers would have caught on more you just cannot beat them for great performance, I have two sets in my kitchen area.

I think that the largest ref in this ad is about 17 cubic feet in total capacity, total capacity of household refs slowly keep going up through the 50s, [ 10-16 CF ]  60s [ 12-a little over 20 CF ] 70s [ 14-28 CF ] 80s- 90s [ 14-30 CF] and in the 2000s sizes are going down a little for mainstream models as the drive for energy efficiency continues to advance, today 16-25 CF refs are most common.

The biggest fridge on this ad is the pink one on #7.

I have the exact same but with left hinges and brushed chrome doors.

Here's an ad showing the same model in Turquoise:

It's a 16 cubic feet model and it's 69¾" tall and 32" wide. Still quite big outside for the interior dimensions but better than the previous year's biggest model that had the exact same exterior dimensions but smaller interior. The 1963 Frost-Proof models now lacked the cold plate and second draft fan behind the refrigerator section which helped to increase the volume by 0.9 cu.ft from 14.63 cu.ft to 15.53 cu.ft., or just enough to call it a 16 cu.ft. model!

The other reason for the smallish interiors is that these cabinets had a very high freezer floor which Frigidaire was trying to hide for the first time in 1963 with doors that extended well over the toe panel. All models still had fiberglass-insulated cabinets that year.

In 1964, two models had foamed cabinets with thinner walls and the 16 cu-ft model was shorter by 5" than the 16 cu.ft. 1963 model and it even had a bit more interior space (16.06 cu.ft. vs 15.53 cu.ft for the taller 1963 model) all gained in the freezer section.

Here's an ad showing a larger pic of model John is talking about in the 1963 refrigerator lineup ad also seen paired with a matching Frost-Proof freezer. 

I've seen Coldspots of similar vintage with stainless doors.  It was likely an optional finish as well.