Hello,
Our refrigerator is a 20 year old custom builtin wood paneled model that is physically like new. The freezer stopped working so we attempted to have it repaired. The factory recommended appliance service technician tried to fix it. He came out several times and little by little replaced most everything in the refrigerator. That included replacing the compressor 3 times, the evaporator, the temperature control, heat exchanger, dryer and sections of the copper tubing and more. He verified there are no leaks and no flow obstructions. However, the end results are always the same. The high side pressure is correct but the low side pressure is too weak.

I watched him perform all the tests and his work seemed professional and performed competently.

All of his testing relied on pressure measurements using the standard gauges. I'm not an expert but clearly there must be additional testing that can be done to isolate the problem. What comes to mind is infra red heat tracing over the cooling loop. Another idea would be to bypass part of the loop. What seems to missing in the testing is measuring the actual flow rate of the coolant.

Being a 20 year old refrigerator, the Freon is of course replaced with the current standard refrigerant. I wonder if the overall system design is simply not compatible with a conversion to the new standards. However, the Kitchen Aide "head quarters" people claim it is and provide the replacement part numbers to do so.

Why not buy a new one? The wood panel version is no longer available and the price of the stainless steel version is $10K.

[img=https://flic.kr/p/2gaQvTW[/img]

manual