Is the fridge out in a freezing cold garage? If so, let the compressor
warm up to room temp and then give it a try. It may be the oil mixed
in with the refrigerant has become waxlike.

Thurston Phoremost wrote:
I have a cyclic defrost fridge in near-new condition which was given
to me, the only problem was the defrost element open circuit.

Well, that fridge has been sitting there for a year, and now that I
decide to fix it, I find the compressor won't start. She hums, likea
the buzzy bee, then the overtemp protector clicks out.

Question - I know that the fridge mechs have a device that they
connect up to send a bit of a boost thru the compressor to unstick it,
but I'm a bit tight, and if I can rig up a relay and/or a capacitor
and/or a triac and/or an instantaneous switch or whatever to do it
myself, I will.

What's the general principle of it? Am I correct in assuming that the
idea is to connect a capacitor across the inductance of the start
winding to make a LC circuit whose resonant freq is close to mains
freq, so that you can get a lot of current flowing for a small
fraction of a second?

So... how do I make one of these gizmos? Can't be too hard, surely?

T.