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Hi guys, In need of some advice/support
Have a Smeg FAB32QAZ fridge freezer, 70/30 split, freezer on the bottom!
last few weeks the freezer temp has been creeping up a little, it’s set on the control panel to -18 and started coming up to -16, alarm started beeping from time to time and it would settle back down. Problems slowly worsened with it sitting at -16 for longer periods and now, the fridge is creeping up. Was set to 4deg and now sitting at 9.
Called out a approved Smeg engineer who said it was fit for the bin. On his report he put “System fault caused fridge fan to fail, no repair possible, Evap fallen away from fridge back”
I work with electronics in my job and so with the eye watering cost of £1600 to replace, thought I’d have a look myself seeing as apart from this issue the machine looks brand new and has worked perfectly for 6/7 years
ive stripped bits down on the machine to investigate further and so far found – the fridge fan is NOT broken, and the freezer fan works fine too, evaporator is in the back of the freezer, is there one on the back of the fridge like the engineer states or is it only the freezer that would have one then air circulated up from there?
compressor seems to run fine, no weird sounds, doesn’t run continuously and when it does it’s slightly warm/ condensing radiator on back of unit is sometime slightly warm in patches.
Any help/info/ ideas of where to start testing much appreciated. Will start buzzing out sensors tomorrow and seeing if anything is open circuit or a dead short!
cheers
mikeIt’s a dual compressor unit so each fridge and freezer work independently of one another.
The freezer is bog standard non-frost free so there’s not much to go wrong really. A thermostat and a compressor and that’s about it.
From what you say though I’d be thinking compressor and that’s not a thing you can change yourself.
K.
Ok thanks for the info, I thought it was! I can only see one compressor on the back at the bottom? Is it the case it’s just one unit but dual inside so has a flown/return for fridge and then the same for freezer?
some more info if it helps, left it empty and off overnight to completely reset/defrost. Switched back on this morning and filled. Both fridge and freezer and running fine, both at there set temps of -18 and 4 degrees and are freezing cold and fridge cold.
Would this still work to get to these temps comfortably if it was the compressor and if it does turn out to be the compressor, with a replacement cost of £1600, surely it would be worth the money to repair do you not think?
thanks for the information
mikeSo a little update. After turning on, it got down to temp at a reasonable rate. Seemed to be happy for a while and now after about 6 hours has started to creep up again. Alarm just went off with freezer at -16. Fridge still apparently 4
Yea that’s the one. Here’s a link https://www.smeguk.com/smeg_com/docs/product_pdf3/FAB32QAZ.pdf
Trust nothing but the info on the rating plate in the fridge. Nothing.
Anything else and all bets are off.
The FAB32QAZ model is a twin compressor retro style fridge freezer from about 2009.
K.
Thanks for your help so far with this! much appreciated.
where would I find the rating plate? I can’t see anything in the fridge, it’s in a alcove and a nightmare to pull out, but I’m guessing it might be on the rear?
I can see a slight recessed box in the side wall on the left by salad draw, about 200mmx200mm, I’m guessing it used to be there……….
Yup.
And without that, you’ve got no hope as I’m sure you realise given that what you think it is, it’s not.
What it might be, I’ve got no idea. And, without knowing what it is you can’t see the layout or find any parts at all for it and loads of them look the same, but are most certainly not the same or have the same parts in them. Worse, some you need the serial number that was there as well to determine parts.
K.
Yea, I feared as much! Ah well it’s done well and maybe time to retire. It’s just a shame because there’s not a mark on it, it still looks brand new and apart from this has been faultless!
im guessing there’s no testing I can do to narrow this down? Or try to get someone to regas to see if that brings it back to life?
Without knowing what it is, there’s really not much help anyone can give you I’m afraid.
Even someone onsite, if that info’s gone, they can’t find any spares reliably.
K.
So slight update. Had another engineer come. He checked the system. Said no problems there. He’s put it down to an electrical fault, either sensor or control board. He put it into fast freeze/ chill mode and it shot down to -24 freezer and 1 in the fridge. So he said if it’s happy to get to those temps then it can’t be a system problem and more electrical such as faulty sensors just telling it not to run when it should?
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