Fridge - Capacitor change (Westinghouse WB4500sa)

[samson22]

Dear community,

I have a fridge/freezer combo, which is a Westinghouse WB4500SA. Since a few days, it produces a frequent buzzing noise. It sounds like an electrical buzzing which is quite annoying. Even worse, it must have stopped freezing for a few hours, because some food items melted and re-froze. I did some research and figured it must be an issue with the run capacitor, which stops the compressor from starting reliably.

I did research on Youtube on how to change the run capacitor of fridges and the instructions are always very straight forward. However, I fail to remove the capacitor from my fridge's compressor. It doesn't look like anything on the Youtube videos and I don't want to damage the plastic attachements.

Has anyone come across this type of fridge before and could help me with this issue? I see that the capacitor is located to the very left, but I can't remove the cable because I can't remove the plastic around it. There are no visible hooks that I can remove or similar.  One of the pictograms indicates that I can remove the plastic case by inserting a screw driver, however, it fails to do so. The 2 screws at the bottom don't help either. They just seem to protect the cables from pulling.

Any help would be greatly appreciated: https://postimg.cc/gallery/ftq3wFr

Thank you.

 

[16345Ed]

I’ve never had a run capacitor go bad. Start relays on the other hand fail quite often. Gotta take those screws out to access. 

[samson22]

19 hours ago, 16345Ed said:

I’ve never had a run capacitor go bad. Start relays on the other hand fail quite often. Gotta take those screws out to access. 

Thank you.

I was finally able to remove the plastic cap to access the electronics. Theoretically, you should be able to remove the lid by poking a long and thin flat screwdriver into the opening hole. However, it didn't work in my case and after 30 minutes of fiddling around, I surgically removed some parts of the plastic and was able to remove the whole cover.

I measured 20 Ohm resistance on the relay, is that ok? It didn't make any noise when shaking it. I couldn't measure the capacitor because my 10$ multimeter doesn't measure capacity or continuos rating.

Here is a video where I was able to capture the buzzing noise:

https://www.mevue.com/v/g70xmwi7281

It doesn't do it all the time, only sometimes. It makes sense, because the fridge is generally cold but seems to warm up occasionally. The "click" at the end sounds like the issue stems from the relays, would you agree?

 

 

[samson22]

Here are pictures from the relay:

https://postimg.cc/gallery/qkvhq3b

And some others from the whole compressor:

https://postimg.cc/gallery/cnj7BGX

[S & E Appliance]

Sounds like the start device is going bad. Hum, click cha cha.

[Budget Appliance Repair]

On 11/15/2021 at 10:26 PM, samson22 said:

I measured 20 Ohm resistance on the relay

20 Ohms is way too high in a cold state, should usually see between 5-8 Ohms across the PTC disk.

[samson22]

Hi all,

just a quick update. It turned out that I still had warranty on the fridge. A technician showed up today and unfortunately I wasn't at home to ask him further questions. The only feedback I got from my girlfriend was: "he said the compressor is fried"

The fridge will be picked up within the next few days and reparied at the shop.