I broke my freezer unit. need answers!

[Krusty]

Ok, so I had this small freezer that was about 2 feet on each end. Over the past couple days, I tore the thing apart so I now have just the parts needed to freeze stuff, namely the compressor, evaporator coils, and condensor coils.

The plan was to use this to chill water, but I have encountered my first problem. While moving some parts around to get everything looking good, I accidently bent part of the condensor coils, which are not made of copper. I freaked out when I heard the leaking sound and tried pinching off the copper tubing to temporarily stop the leak. Of course that didn't work.

Anyways, now I have a perfectly good freezer unit that has a broken piece of tubing that needs fixing and some freon filling to get done.

My question is this: The condensor coils are about 1/4" thick and form a crappy radiator. Could I completely replace this with a car radiator that has 1/2" coils in it?

The cooling ability would probably be much better with the car radiator, but I am unsure what the larger tubing will do. I tried calling refrigerator repair people in the phone book, but they are all repair man dispatchers that don't know crap about refrigerators.

[ButcherUK]

You pinched off freon... you do know that stuff is caustic right :)
As for larger coils, it might work but probably not, phase-change relies on keeping the coolant at certain pressures in certain places, namely you need higher pressure on the condenser side. Enlarging the pipes would affect this and might mean new evaporator and even new compressor.

[Krusty]

Anyone know where I could get a radiator with 1/4" tubing then?

[ButcherUK]

Originally posted by Krusty
Anyone know where I could get a radiator with 1/4" tubing then?
Another fridge? :)

[ol' man]

Originally posted by ButcherUK
You pinched off freon... you do know that stuff is caustic right :)


I am wondering how a chloro fluoro alkane could be caustic. Do you mean toxic? If it were caustic is would be highly basic. Some amines are pretty caustic too but not like the alkali metal hydroxides. Ironically I have a known a few who have huffed freon and woke up face down in a forest. They were fine minus a few brain cells:D

[ButcherUK]

Hmm guess that info I had on R-134a being caustic was wrong. Just doubled checked and the only health hazard listed is asphyxiation.

[mx]

I tried removing a compressor unit and it was a failure, because it will be hard to adequately insulate and even so reducing the volume of coolant(water) will cause large temperature swings(if overclocked).
With a small amount of coolant(water) let's say 1 quart it will take a ridiculous amount of time to recover to a desireable range(enough to justify chilled water)even after the processor is idle....just one notch above unchilled water!

That is why I am building another system(XP 1900+overclocked), this time I'm leaving the freezer intact, two systems one portable and one not so portable. :burn: