About a year ago, I noticed that the inside of my late 80's Hotpoint
refrigerator was sweating a lot and it seemed that it was running warm
in the refrigerator section. Freezer was fine, I had pulled the back
panel and checked the freezer coils, no ice on them. I got a new
barebones model from Home Depot and set the old Hotpoint out in the
gargage. I fired it up a couple of times since then just to verify the
freezer was still working.

I was thinking of seeing if I could sell it or give it away as a fixer
so a couple of days ago I gave it a good cleaning and also plugged it
in.

Well, now I find that at the midrange setting of both the freezer and
fridge sections, the freezer is right at about 0 deg and the fridge is
at 40 which is what I gather is considered optimal. None of the
sweating I saw a year ago. I.e., it seems to be operating normally.

I'm not strong on refrigerator theory, but what could be a reason why
it seemed to be exhibiting symptoms and after a year of mostly
collecting dust now it isn't? Is it possible that sitting empty isn't
a valid test of whether it's working well or should it not matter?

Thanks for all input