Hello everyone. We've been enjoying long-term lurking but are now just starting to work on our
1968 Safari, which appears to need approximately one of everything, and needing some advice from more experienced owners.
We have the original fridge and want to move it to make more room for other projects and are wondering whether it's worth keeping, or if we should just find it a new home. I tested it and found that it works great on both AC and gas. But it is also
very rusty in the boiler area and the outside boiler cover has the yellow powder that I understand is a sign of a refrigerant leak. I opened the cover of the heating area and took out the insulation to see how it looks. A little more yellow powder came from somewhere during that process but it's not clear where. The whole area, as you can see in the pics below, is extremely rusty.
So, the question is whether the yellow powder is necessarily a sign of a leak and what, if anything, can be done about it. It cooled down in 3-4 hours to 36 degrees in an ~80 degree trailer. The yellow powder looks like it's been there for a long time, so it seems strange that if there's a leak, it would still work so well. We're also wondering whether that's an unusual amount of rust and too far gone to make it worth continuing to use. We thought we might clean up the rust with naval jelly and paint with high temperature paint and pack it back up again. On the other hand, if it's on it's way out anyway, we don't want to give up the space or time to fix it. We also know that it is full of ammonia under pressure and don't want to undertake anything dangerous in fixing it.
We would greatly appreciate any opinions or advice, especially anyone
with a lot of experience with the older fridges. And it's great to finally join the conversation. Thanks so much!
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