aircooled posted:Stan...You got me on that "windings start to wear". How do windings wear ? I thought they were purposely glued-varnished-wedged with wood-paper wrapped and what ever to not move at all..........Bruce
It's been 40 years (or more) since windings had wood or paper. The more efficient the motor, the thinner the varnish, and the hotter the windings get. Appliances cost about what they did 40 years ago, so something has to give. Almost all little bitty motors are of east Asian, or Indian, or Brazilian manufacture, and are sold to manufacturers at nearly zero profit. Appliances are made to be completely disposable now.
Windings get hotter than they used to, the varnish is thinner than it used to be, and they do "wear", as in the varnish breaks down and creates a ever so slight path to ground-- not enough to shock anybody or to trip a breaker, but enough to see with a very good (crank-type) meg-ohm meter.
Sometimes, the winding insulation is cheesy enough, or the refrigerant (which spills over the windings in a compressor) has enough continuity to occasionally trip a GFCI breaker, even when new. I took care of a place that replaced 3 new compressors on a 2-dr. reach in before I just changed the breaker. We never had a problem again.
You can do as you wish, if you're afraid of dying by touching your refrigerator, but I'm never coming home from vacation to a freezer full of spoiled food.