Miata shifter, Fridge problems (posted from home)
(this post covers 2-3 October)
-------------------------
Tuesday, 3 October-
Bad news on the fridge. It has been running since 1530 yesterday but is not even cool to the touch inside this morning. We called the appliance shop and were given an appointment for tomorrow afternoon. But an hour later the tech called and said he had finished up another job earlier than expected and would be right out. His testing showed the compressor was running but not pumping coolant, either because of a bad compressor or a refrigerant leak. The former is a $500 fix, the latter a $300-400 fix. That doesn’t make a lot of sense on an eight-year old fridge so we’re abandoning ship. Anybody need a brand-new temp-control for a bottom freezer Amana fridge? It seems very odd that we’d have a double failure but I can’t blame the tech. I saw him jump the temp-control switch and the fridge started right up, including the compressor.
After power was restored back on the night of September 23rd, the fridge was running when we went to bed. It was not running when we got up but the upper compartment was cool and the freezer had ice so we assumed it was just in that part of its cycle. I can only guess now that the compressor pump had failed during the night, perhaps from the strain of bringing the fridge up to temp after its long sleep, and somehow that caused the temp control failure.
Labashi is not happy about this. She had spent weeks contacting the manufacturer and researching how to paint (and then painting) the fridge for her updated kitchen color scheme. She had found the right self-leveling paint that would stick to the textured surface of the fridge and a copper-color paint for the handles. She had added pigment to the paint and run a series of color-match tests to get it just right. It took two days just to put the paint on. And a few months later, when the copper color started wearing off the handle prematurely, she fixed that and figured out how to seal it with a clear over-coat to prevent any further problems. In the end, the fridge looked great and she was very happy with it. Now it’s dead.
We spent the afternoon shopping for a new fridge. At first the shopping didn’t go well at all. There’s very limited selection in bottom-freezer fridges. Worse, the one color she will even consider—bisque—is being phased out. (The new ‘in’ color will be bronze, we learned. Shh, don’t tell anybody).
We couldn’t just replace our Amana unit because it’s no longer made. The old unit was an in-between size of 20.5 cu ft and that’s no longer made. The 19 cu ft units look way too small and the 22.5 cu ft units are too tall. At one point it looked like I was going to have to start sawzall-ing cabinets and countertop. What a mess that would have been.
We then happened upon a two-vertical-door fridge of 22 cu ft. But we didn’t want an ice-water dispenser. The sales guy found us a GE unit with no dispenser and we almost bought it on the spot but we wanted to first check whether Sears had that design. We had been there earlier but had only looked at the bottom-freezer models.
And then a miracle happened. We were at Sears looking at the two-vertical-doors models and comparing to the bottom-freezer model. Labashi was frowning as she tried to decide whether to take the larger unit whose drawer-layout she didn’t like or live with the lots-smaller-than-we-had unit whose drawer-layout she loved. And there it was. In teeny-tiny print on the door sticker of the too-small bottom-freezer model was a note: this model available in 22 cu ft with dimensions x-by-y-by-z (and in color bisque). And x-by-y-by-z fit. And the unit was on sale, saving us $200 over others we were considering. And they could deliver in two days where the others would require ten days.
We celebrated by stopping by the brand-new Chili’s restaurant in York and picking up some fajitas for supper. This is one of Labashi’s favorite meals and one we like to do occasionally while traveling in the van.
That evening we watched two more episodes of ‘Lost, Season Two’.
---------------------------
Monday, 2 October-
Today I spent most of the morning catching up on my blog entries and the afternoon working on the Miata. The car problem was a bit frustrating in that it revealed that my local garage had not re-assembled the transmission shifter properly after replacing the clutch earlier this summer. I had noticed the problem yesterday afternoon when I began missing shifts, particularly the first-to-second shift. It was particularly galling given that I’ve not put 100 miles on the Miata since the service work was done. I first thought I’d just take it back to the shop. But once I read through several manuals I thought the problem was most likely loose screws on the plate that holds the shifter into the transmission and I wanted to see. I’m lucky the previous owner had bought not only a service manual for this car but also several very detailed performance-improvement project manuals. One of the projects involved replacing the shifter boots and that one provided good photos and directions for accessing and removing the shifter.
Once into the shifter mount I found three loose cap-screws just as I had expected. But as I tightened them down I found the shifter getting tougher and tougher to work. This shifter is an after-market performance product called a ‘short-throw shifter’ and I’ve never liked the feel of it. Now I know why. It was not engineered correctly. Where the stock shifter ball sits on Teflon bushings, the short-shifter kit places the ball on the end of a metal tube and depends entirely on liberal greasing of the metal-to-metal contact area for smooth operation. And the fit issue shows another engineering problem. Apparently it depended on the thickness of the gaskets to allow the shifter to move at all and now that the gaskets were crushed down, it was too tight. And my local garage guys simply left the screws a little loose to allow it to work. They didn’t anticipate that the screws would work their way out so quickly.
Given that running the cap-screws down would bind up the shifter, I decided to revert to the stock shifter. That’s another area where I’m lucky. The previous owner kept everything--- not only all the receipts but also all the stock parts that were taken off as performance and appearance upgrades were done.
I did run into some problems with re-installing the stock shifter but soon realized I was attempting to follow the drawings and directions for installing the short-shifter. Once I removed the non-stock adapter bushing and spacer, it went together easily and bolted down snugly. A short drive showed I had made a good decision—the shifting is much improved.
That afternoon the fridge-man showed up with the replacement temp-control for our dead refrigerator. The installation only took a few minutes and the fridge started up. It needs 24 hours to settle into its normal cycle. Cost of repair was $130.
That evening we watched a few more ‘Lost-Season Two’ episodes.
--------------------------
(this post covers 2-3 October)
-------------------------
Tuesday, 3 October-
Bad news on the fridge. It has been running since 1530 yesterday but is not even cool to the touch inside this morning. We called the appliance shop and were given an appointment for tomorrow afternoon. But an hour later the tech called and said he had finished up another job earlier than expected and would be right out. His testing showed the compressor was running but not pumping coolant, either because of a bad compressor or a refrigerant leak. The former is a $500 fix, the latter a $300-400 fix. That doesn’t make a lot of sense on an eight-year old fridge so we’re abandoning ship. Anybody need a brand-new temp-control for a bottom freezer Amana fridge? It seems very odd that we’d have a double failure but I can’t blame the tech. I saw him jump the temp-control switch and the fridge started right up, including the compressor.
After power was restored back on the night of September 23rd, the fridge was running when we went to bed. It was not running when we got up but the upper compartment was cool and the freezer had ice so we assumed it was just in that part of its cycle. I can only guess now that the compressor pump had failed during the night, perhaps from the strain of bringing the fridge up to temp after its long sleep, and somehow that caused the temp control failure.
Labashi is not happy about this. She had spent weeks contacting the manufacturer and researching how to paint (and then painting) the fridge for her updated kitchen color scheme. She had found the right self-leveling paint that would stick to the textured surface of the fridge and a copper-color paint for the handles. She had added pigment to the paint and run a series of color-match tests to get it just right. It took two days just to put the paint on. And a few months later, when the copper color started wearing off the handle prematurely, she fixed that and figured out how to seal it with a clear over-coat to prevent any further problems. In the end, the fridge looked great and she was very happy with it. Now it’s dead.
We spent the afternoon shopping for a new fridge. At first the shopping didn’t go well at all. There’s very limited selection in bottom-freezer fridges. Worse, the one color she will even consider—bisque—is being phased out. (The new ‘in’ color will be bronze, we learned. Shh, don’t tell anybody).
We couldn’t just replace our Amana unit because it’s no longer made. The old unit was an in-between size of 20.5 cu ft and that’s no longer made. The 19 cu ft units look way too small and the 22.5 cu ft units are too tall. At one point it looked like I was going to have to start sawzall-ing cabinets and countertop. What a mess that would have been.
We then happened upon a two-vertical-door fridge of 22 cu ft. But we didn’t want an ice-water dispenser. The sales guy found us a GE unit with no dispenser and we almost bought it on the spot but we wanted to first check whether Sears had that design. We had been there earlier but had only looked at the bottom-freezer models.
And then a miracle happened. We were at Sears looking at the two-vertical-doors models and comparing to the bottom-freezer model. Labashi was frowning as she tried to decide whether to take the larger unit whose drawer-layout she didn’t like or live with the lots-smaller-than-we-had unit whose drawer-layout she loved. And there it was. In teeny-tiny print on the door sticker of the too-small bottom-freezer model was a note: this model available in 22 cu ft with dimensions x-by-y-by-z (and in color bisque). And x-by-y-by-z fit. And the unit was on sale, saving us $200 over others we were considering. And they could deliver in two days where the others would require ten days.
We celebrated by stopping by the brand-new Chili’s restaurant in York and picking up some fajitas for supper. This is one of Labashi’s favorite meals and one we like to do occasionally while traveling in the van.
That evening we watched two more episodes of ‘Lost, Season Two’.
---------------------------
Monday, 2 October-
Today I spent most of the morning catching up on my blog entries and the afternoon working on the Miata. The car problem was a bit frustrating in that it revealed that my local garage had not re-assembled the transmission shifter properly after replacing the clutch earlier this summer. I had noticed the problem yesterday afternoon when I began missing shifts, particularly the first-to-second shift. It was particularly galling given that I’ve not put 100 miles on the Miata since the service work was done. I first thought I’d just take it back to the shop. But once I read through several manuals I thought the problem was most likely loose screws on the plate that holds the shifter into the transmission and I wanted to see. I’m lucky the previous owner had bought not only a service manual for this car but also several very detailed performance-improvement project manuals. One of the projects involved replacing the shifter boots and that one provided good photos and directions for accessing and removing the shifter.
Once into the shifter mount I found three loose cap-screws just as I had expected. But as I tightened them down I found the shifter getting tougher and tougher to work. This shifter is an after-market performance product called a ‘short-throw shifter’ and I’ve never liked the feel of it. Now I know why. It was not engineered correctly. Where the stock shifter ball sits on Teflon bushings, the short-shifter kit places the ball on the end of a metal tube and depends entirely on liberal greasing of the metal-to-metal contact area for smooth operation. And the fit issue shows another engineering problem. Apparently it depended on the thickness of the gaskets to allow the shifter to move at all and now that the gaskets were crushed down, it was too tight. And my local garage guys simply left the screws a little loose to allow it to work. They didn’t anticipate that the screws would work their way out so quickly.
Given that running the cap-screws down would bind up the shifter, I decided to revert to the stock shifter. That’s another area where I’m lucky. The previous owner kept everything--- not only all the receipts but also all the stock parts that were taken off as performance and appearance upgrades were done.
I did run into some problems with re-installing the stock shifter but soon realized I was attempting to follow the drawings and directions for installing the short-shifter. Once I removed the non-stock adapter bushing and spacer, it went together easily and bolted down snugly. A short drive showed I had made a good decision—the shifting is much improved.
That afternoon the fridge-man showed up with the replacement temp-control for our dead refrigerator. The installation only took a few minutes and the fridge started up. It needs 24 hours to settle into its normal cycle. Cost of repair was $130.
That evening we watched a few more ‘Lost-Season Two’ episodes.
--------------------------
posted by Bezabor&Labashi | 11:08
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