cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/53334380

My fridge (Zanussi Z19/4D) quit working. The compressor and relay are both fine. I hotwired the relay and bypassed the thermostat. So I can force the fridge to run on demand using a switch.

Either the thermostat is broken, or some mystery component attached to the thermostat is broken. These parts are no longer sold for my model. Amazon sells “universal” thermostats cheaply, but I boycott Amazon. In fact, I try to boycott banks too so I don’t shop online generally. In the off chance that a 230v universal thermostat were sold locally, I still don’t know if it solves my problem.

So what can I do with this fridge? I could put a timer on it and set it to run 1 hr/day, or something. Is it worth it? I suppose a timer would not be accurate enough to use for food. Temps would probably be unstable. But I wonder if it’d be good for keeping wine or beer slightly chilled. Someone persnickety enough to want a wine cooler might not like the temp fluctuations a timer would bring.

Might it make sense to pull it out for parties and have it continuously run to keep drinks cold? Or would they freeze?

These use-cases don’t really interest me directly. I prefer beer nearly room temp anyway. But I’m just looking for ideas maybe to pawn the thing off onto someone else to prevent waste.

Should I trash it? I would likely harvest the working compressor in that case, but then do what with that? I could look for a trashed fridge that just needs a compressor, but I have never plumbed a compressor and messed with coolant. Can a novice handle that?