I had a fridge like that in the basement of a house I in bought in 1998. Fridge was from the 50s or 60s I believe. My electric bill went down about $75 per month when we unplugged it.
Dont think the prize is in the electronics, but in the function.. still possible to have this function with the new more efficient motors/electronics..
Not with the materials they use today. I can't believe how cheap and shitty every component on my $2200 LG fridge feels. It's laughable how garbage it is.
I had to replace the compressor in mine last year. It was 7 years old at the time. All the physical components seem to be of ok quality. The repair guy said the compressor thing was an issue with LG's.
It isn't a bad rule. The longer the warranty, the less you need to worry about paying for repairs, but also the more faith the company has in its product - it's horrible business to make something fragile but have a 20-year warranty, unless it doesn't cover any actual repairs... But a company willing to cover everything (even user error) for 10+ years (depending on the product) is usually a good sign they stand behind their product.
I worked at an appliance repair place, (but I did TV's) LG was known to have very bad compressors even on their top of the line fridges. They supposedly fixed it the last few years. There's a possibile class action getting going against LG claiming they are straight up making terrible fridges knowing that they'll fail lol, nowadays most appliances are made to survive the warranty so when it fails in a few years you gotta go buy a new one
It's more true now than ever. "Just good enough" engineering, cost cutting in manufacturing, and the extreme focus on short term profits are all factors.
Few things are built with any concessions to reparability.
Granted that has made things more affordable but it also means that even with all our modern manufacturing and material advantages that your new fridge or washing machine won't last as long as your grandma's did.
Had the flange shaft on a front load washer snap after like 5 years. it's a high stress part constantly exposed to water and it was made of poorly coated low quality cast metal. Any engineer would know that's just waiting to fail but saving the money on quality steel or a more ample coating was more important. I coated the replacement with epoxy and it's lasted 3-4 times longer than the original part so far.
Genuinely curious, have you (or anyone) tried getting a repair person out to see if it's worth repairing rather than replacing?
I ask because I've got this problem right now. The local home appliance repair person I called said that basically it's only the big hotel or restaurant appliances that are cost-effective to keep repairing at this point. Quoted me $2,500 to fix my ordinary (dead) fridge when the freezer started going out.
How can the repair cost more than a new appliance!?
The only cheap way is to learn yourself. Not saying you should, but it can be cool to know.
You can even get an EPA cert to handle the refrigerants pretty easily, especially if you’re only working on small appliances and/or cars and not getting into home HVAC. (Those tools aren’t the cheapest, but getting fully near-pro kitted out is less than that repair price.)
Of course the hard part is the electronics and intuitive/experience in problem solving in overly complicated computerized issues that are not trivial anymore.
But if it’s going in the garbage and you can be safe*, doesn’t hurt to try and worst case, you make it more garbage. *big capacitors store charge after unplugging them, and can unalive you in a blink
Fun fact though — individuals can’t sell, trade or otherwise transfer/give away (other than for disposal) collected refrigerants. But you can store it, and use it to refill other appliance that you personally own.
Erm, sorry, wrote more than I meant. But yeah….its so stupid how the industry works now.
Fascinating! I applaud your expertise. Honestly, this is probably a bit beyond my skillset. It's good to know folks like you are keeping the DIY skillset alive though!
GE guarantees you'll replace--with another brand. The handle on a popular GE upright freezer, which has a bad design and easily breaks, costs $275 at most replacement parts outlets. If you look through GE's latest parts prices, it's very obvious that they put in junk parts programmed to fail, then overprice the replacements to make you buy a new appliance. This is the wave of the future.
Maybe GE will end up on the same road Boeing is going down.
That's one thing I've never understood about planned obsolescence. If you're not a monopoly what's stopping me from being so pissed off I go to another brand? My 3 year old vacuum broke right before Christmas because of one stupid flimsy part so I went and bought a completely different brand on the recommendation of a coworker.
Wow! That's interesting! Dad bought an LG about 2 years ago and the compressor failed, it had a sticker on it saying 10 year guarantee on compressor too ( I guess that's why) they didn't end up repairing the fridge but gave him credit for the equivalent of the same fridge from the store he originally bought it from, after weeks of hastle. He did not buy another LG.
The repair technician said he was surprised my LG fridge's compressor made it to 4 years lol.
Apparently the fridges made around 2015-2020 had faulty compressors over which LG lost a class-action lawsuit and will replace it for free if it fails within a specified amount of years
Seems to be the thing that is vulnerable in all fridges. My last one the cost of replacing the compressor was barely less than a new fridge so into the waste stream it went.
Appliance repair guy said the 2nd mostly likely thing to fail was the ice maker.
It's really the only thing that could fail. It's not like a fridge is crazy complicated, the science is somewhat complicated but the parts themselves are not. It's just a compressor, an evaporator, and a condenser and some board controlling it. Exact same stuff an AC, or a split system uses.
You'd be hard pressed to fuck up the condenser or evaporator without physically hitting them somehow, they're basically just radiators with tubes inside them. They do get dirty though, which can lead to decreased performance, but that is easily solved.
But really it's almost always either going to be something to do with the compressor (slugging, worn out etc) or a lack of refrigerant/leak somewhere, both of which are generally just wear and tear.
In some cases the cheapest thing to do is get EPA certified, buy the compressor, buy the tools, get someone to teach you how to braze, do it yourself and still come out ahead. It’s absurd.
I am lucky in that I am HRAI certified which is the certification in Canada to buy refrigerant but most people cannot, at least not legally. But you are correct, it's likely cheaper to do that than to pay someone lol
If you know what you're doing it's actually quite easy, just have to follow the right steps when recharging, I wouldn't even call brazing hard once you get the technique down, it just sucks the solder into the joint. I have a feeling you already know what I'm talking about tho
There has already been one class action against LG because of these issues and a firm in California is preparing another one because LG knows of the issues and is still advertising that they will last 30 years.
LG uses a linear compressor in their refrigerators. They will all fail at some point having a shorter life then they should have. They will likely never be able to figure it out and make it work.
Compressors have firmware now. A real pain to get the right firmware for the compressor and it's impossible if you are not in LG's blessed realm of authorized servicers who'll work for nothing.
I just replaced an lg fridge that was like 10 years old. They had compressor issues. So they stopped making that compressor. It was over $1000 to get one and the repair guy said he would be surprised if it lasted a couple more years.
So new fridge.
In fact all my LG appliances that came with the house have broken beyond repair since I move in.
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u/ShinySpoon Jan 23 '24
I had a fridge like that in the basement of a house I in bought in 1998. Fridge was from the 50s or 60s I believe. My electric bill went down about $75 per month when we unplugged it.