This giant beauty of a fridge came in the shop this week.  It doesn't need restoration, because the cabinet is in that good of shape! 

The back-story is fairly sad in that it was removed from an amazingly well preserved kitchen from the 30's.  The home was not daily-used since the 1950's and everything pretty well stayed as it was left. The pictures of the fridge in a kitchen setting are the original kitchen where it came from.

A good friend of mine lives nearby. He has been instrumental in saving many historic artifacts such as industrial fans, other fridges, and architectural pieces from around the southeast. He has been talking to the caretaker of this home for years, and got word that it was due to be "remodeled" and all the historical charm was to be stripped away. 

The Seeger fridge had a remote compressor unit mounted in a crawlspace under the house. There were three units under there, where people had been "abandoning in pace" old units when they would stop working. He got the cabinet, and all units from under the house which were used with it. Sadly, with this being a coastal town, the units have all been submerged in flood water.  One of them is a lost cause where the crankcase plug was not installed, leading to water inside the compressor. The stack of three units on a dolly are what was salvaged. There are two Copeland Copelametic 1/4 HP R22 units, and a 1/3 HP Aspera hermetic unit there. 

My friend wants the fridge to be self-contained and reliable. The plan was to mount the unit under the cabinet and make up a new lines set for it.  I had a similar Copeland condensing unit on hand which needed less work, so we used that one to get it going. The unit I had is a low-start-torque R12 unit. The low start torque means it has to be used with a capillary tube which will allow the pressures to equalize between runs. The original ones were high start torque and had an expansion valve.  The expansion valve was an old Detroit Lubricator brand, marked for methyl chloride. No idea how poorly that was working with R22, if that is what was in the Copeland units so marked! 

The new setup uses a capillary tube and R152A so that is not an issue. 

This is the largest "ice tray style" flooded evaporator I have ever seen. It is massive!  The evaporator is marked Frigidaire, as well.  The whole cabinet is massive. To get an idea of scale, that is a 1/4 HP Copeland semi-hermetic compressor mounted in the bottom. It weighs about 100 pounds but looks tiny compared to the cabinet! 

This is going in my friends historic home in southern Louisiana. All the interior shelves and bins etc. are present but we didn't bring them here for the repairs.

Hope you enjoy the pictures!

Sincerely,

David

Thanks Greg; and Melvin.  I appreciate it!  This is a really cool piece.

Wow. A work of art.

I can think of somebody at this website who might like that brand name in their collection...

Thanks John!  I believe I remember seeing pictures of your 1927 Frigidaire restoration. It also looked very nice. If it's the one I am thinking of; you used a hermetic compressor unit and modified the original evaporator to work with it, so that the evaporator surround and original ice cube trays could be retained. 

I do have a 1931 Frigidaire in my kitchen. It is almost all original, having had its repulsion-induction motor replaced with a factory replacement Delco capacitor start motor in decades gone by. I rebuilt it about 5 years ago. After the initial few months of testing and tweaking in my shop it has been very nearly trouble-free. The belt-drive units aren't for everyone because they do require maintenance; but it is one of my favorite antiques in my home. Always amazes my visitors. I have an original can of Frigidaire oil, and the hard-back factory service manual sitting on top.

Kevin, the picture #3 shows the back of the GE unit-bearing condenser fan motor. The three holes around the periphery are for mounting it. The shaft is facing down against the table.  To the left of the motor you see a coiled sensing tube for the thermostat. It's not related to the motor. I attached another picture showing the motor installed so you can get a better idea of it. The black "stem" sticking out of the rear cover (facing down in the original post photo #3 and facing straight up in this photo) is a rubber plug in the motor's oiling port.  The motor probably would have originally had an extension tube with a Gits oiler. That was gone when we got it, so I put a rubber cap in the port to keep dirt out.