Comment by inferiorhuman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by inferiorhuman | Hacker News Reader

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  Yes, but how often do you experience power outages … I think in the last
  15 years it only happened to me once.

You must not live in Texas or California.

  or other things that lead to weird temperature changes?

You're a lot more upbeat on current fridge reliability than I am. LG lost a class action suit regarding their junk "linear" compressors a few years ago, and despite multiple supposed revisions you can still find appliance repair folks badmouthing their current crop of linear compressors on youtube. To the best of my knowledge, my vile LG ex-fridge didn't have a linear compressor, but it did have a habit of icing up the evap coils until the fucking thing couldn't keep the temp down. LG sent a tech out twice, he couldn't figure it out. I got tired of throwing out food and tired of ice buildup hitting the fan and making an absolute cacophony in the middle of the night… so they finally bought it back.

I've seen some grumblings that the switch (in the US) to R600 is killing durability, but I'm not sure I buy that. If you dig through some of the service literature out there you'll see that companies across the board are also cheapening the sealed systems (e.g. aluminum replacing copper).

  you know you should close the fridge door.

A common complaint about my current fridge is that the doors do not close on their own. The detent is wicked strong. I suspect you'd have to tilt it back to an uncomfortable degree to overcome it. E.g. the door probably wouldn't stay open at all on its own.

Its not just their linear compressors, its the fact that they use very thin aluminum tubing on the high side, and apparently have had assembly issues where weld material has splattered on the tubes, which after a bit of thermal cycling (or maybe its just galvanic corrosion) they start leaking.

I to had a LG refrigerator declared "unfixable" and bought back by LG, but I actually decided they were idiots and fixed it myself after having not only their local repair people fail to fix it, but the "expert" from LG's regional center come out and diagnose it. (It should be noted that he diagnosed the condenser, the only part not already replaced at that point, and that failed to fix it so, they declared it unfixable).

Turns out in my case, the leak was in the yoder loop, a modern trick for increasing the efficiency of a refrigerator by running a high pressure refrigerant line around the doors to avoid needing electric defrost loops (what pretty much every fridge made pre ~2005 or so has).

And since the yoder loop is embedded in the spray foam insulation between the exterior and interior of the fridge is is largely unrepairable because the insulation would have to be destroyed and somehow partially refilled, which wouldn't be possible without adding a bunch of access holes/etc to the exterior.

So, I bypassed it, as a "research project" before buying another fridge, something the LG folks told me wouldn't work, and the tech refused to do. Which funny enough i'm an EPA certified small appliance repair tech (don't ask! lol) so, it apparently is just up my alley. And guess what 5 years later is still going. I've had to manually defrost the ice maker fan once in that timeframe and it does tend to get some condensation build up on the bottom of the french doors, but nothing that wipeing it away every few days doens't solve.

As an additional bit of fun, this refrigerator has a steel condenser and both aluminum as well as copper tubing/fittings.

So it was unfixable, without disabling an essential feature?

The yoder loop on a fridge is designed to prevent condensation near the door seals. Depending on your climate you may be able to get away without one.

When I'm talking about the heater on mine not working, I'm talking about the heater for the evaporator. Without a working heater I'd get enough ice built up on the evaporator within a week to cause problems with the evaporator fan. If the fan doesn't work you're not gonna get much in the way of cool air into the fridge or freezer compartments.

You didn’t mention the evap heater. What could LG have done differently to fix your fridge to factory spec?

Pretty much everything else could be done differently:

- Calling in a warranty claim involved going through a troubleshooting script that wanted me to do things that my fridge could not do. LG needs to get their documentation in order so that their call center staff can at least approach being useful.

- LG punted me to an authorized service center first thing. I'm in the Bay Area which should, IMO, be a large enough market to have sufficient LG direct staff. LG needs to hire more repair staff.

- The third party ignored me for a few weeks and then I started making noise in LG's general direction. LG probably needs to up their warranty rates to entice third parties to actually service these calls.

- LG finally sent one of their techs out. He called me, I described the symptoms and the temperature graphs to give him an idea of what's going on. He finally admitted that he didn't have ANY parts for this fridge on his truck. So I told him to order what he thought needed. That took about two weeks. On his first visit he identified more stuff he wanted to replace so that took another few days because the west coast distribution center didn't have the parts and he missed the cutoff for the east coast center. LG needs to get their American logistics in order.

- LG pushed really hard to get the tech out here ASAP even though he had some idea as to what was wrong and was in no position to fix anything. LG ought to stop relying so heavily on useless metrics.

It's been a long enough time I don't remember the precise symptoms and I've no idea what actually failed beyond a thermistor so it's impossible to suggest engineering improvements. However I think LG ought to work on training their own techs to get their diagnostic skills up to snuff.

Although I'm pretty sure it's not one of LG's horrific linear compressors, I suspect the compressor failed or there was a refrigerant leak. Unlike the above poster I've working knowledge of automotive A/C not small appliances. In a car the refrigerant will carry the lubricant, so a refrigerant leak can indeed cause problems as the compressor eventually runs dry. For all I know the fridge's compressor uses an oil free design and failed for other reasons. I think the tech checked temperatures at the condenser and was happy with that – but remember unlike on a car refrigerators have no ports to check pressures. That's crucial in diagnosing problems, so techs are kinda flying blind here.

If the problem was with the sealed system then the solution is: LG needs to engineer their fridges properly. Fixing the sealed system in the field is something you can do (except for the yoder loop in the insulation) but it takes time and skill, things that most techs don't have. Basically those repairs won't last. Working with aluminum (welding, brazing, soldering) is tough, although I think LG is moving to using fancy compression fittings for repairs.

If it's basically anything else they need to again work on training their techs to diagnose these things properly.

Ah you’re not OP. Sorry, I was only interested in why OP called techs “idiots” after they (eventually) correctly diagnosed an unfixable fridge.

They never actually diagnosed it, I did. They just kept replacing things until they decided they couldn't actually fix it and sent a check. At no point did LG or the authorized center actually find a leak, or suggest that it might be leaking from the yoder loop. They would come out with their leak detection equipment (both sniffers and after the dryer replacement, a UV light to detect the dye) fail to find a leak, and just replace the next thing on the list. Which usually was a three trip process for each item they replaced with a few days/week or so while they ordered the part, and queued the work detail.

I had the yoder loop conversation with the tech on the last call when they came out to verify it was still broken/unfixable, and he basically said bypassing it wasn't possible, which is odd since other companies can.

My experience went on for ~6 months of soap opera, similar to what you're describing, where an authorized service provider would "fix" it, and then it would stop cooling within a week or two. Then LG, or the authorized center, would diagnose some other thing that hadn't been replaced. No actual leaks were ever found, which was the problem after they replaced the compressor (the first thing they replaced, but it was on the 2nd trip), and now they had access points to check the pressure.

With the bonus that in our particular case, we were paying for the "labor" and getting the parts under warranty, which means that in the end I paid ~$1000 for repairs and LG claimed to have provided ~$1200 worth of parts (which is bullshit because an aluminum evaporator coil doesn't cost $400 unless it has a 20x retail markup). So, when they sent a check, it covered our sunk costs. But I had a fridge with a brand new compressor, evaporator, and condenser, as well as an upgraded control board/etc. This is part of the reason I took a crack and just ran it without the Yoder loop.

So, a couple of points: some other companies fix yoder loop leaks by bypassing them and feeding factory-provided heating coils through the now vacant line.

Also, the LG parts all had copper brazing points, so the tech never had to work with aluminum/steel directly.

Finally, I wonder, after your initial comment, if there was just a problem with the refrigerant charge, which was causing your fan to ice over as a byproduct because it was slightly under/overcharged from the factory.

  now they had access points to check the pressure.

This is such a mixed blessing. It's great for diagnostic work, but it's also one more place for things to leak over time. Cars can deal with leaks (and are expected to leak by design) but they've also got a couple pounds of refrigerant if we're talking R134a. A fridge has like 40 grams (which makes the explosion hazard stickers on the R600a fridges kinda funny). Were it me, I'd be very wary of accepting sealed system work under warranty.

  Also, the LG parts all had copper brazing points, so the tech never
  had to work with aluminum/steel directly.

That's interesting. I wonder how the mix of metals bodes for longevity.

  Finally, I wonder, after your initial comment, if there was just a
  problem with the refrigerant charge, which was causing your fan to
  ice over as a byproduct because it was slightly under/overcharged
  from the factory.

To be clear the whole evap was icing over. But the fan is, by necessity, quite close. I'm inclined to think it was filled properly at the factory because overall the build quality was leaps and bounds ahead of Whirlpool (and Frigidaire). It wouldn't take much to convince me that there was some sort of electronic component failure as one thermistor was already out of spec.

With the LG I was a renter, so I was willing to push things along with LG and do as much diagnostic work as possible. But at the end of the day I didn't really want to dig into fixing anything myself because the fridge simply wasn't mine. I also didn't have room for a second "project" fridge. The landlady wasn't out anything because it was covered under the extended warranty (my initial call was a year + 1 day after the purchase) and LG bought it back for full retail price.

Yeah I had a top freezer model, something that should be dead nuts simple and yet everything was still electronically controlled. That means you've got all sorts of onboard diagnostics. Even so the LG tech couldn't figure out the problem. In general though I can totally get why someone employed by the manufacturer wouldn't want to go off script. Too much liability.

One of many problems with LG is that they seem to have a rotating cast of metrics driven clowns running LG America. Junking a fridge is almost certainly more cost effective than spending the time to fix it, train their techs in depth, and get their logistics in order. The tech that came out had previously worked for GE and had worse things to say about their brand of chaos.

Funny enough the Whirlpool that replaced it did have exposed insulation (and gobs of epoxy everywhere). It would've been worse than the LG, except it actually kept things cool.

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