Refrigerator Deal and Repair

C

Chriselalto

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jan 3, 2021
Messages
899
Location
Clayton, NC
Rating - 100%
3   0   0
Came across a fridge on Marketplace that was at a stupid low price. $1800 Retail and 2.5 years old, bought for a couple bones.

Seller stated that the fridge gets a "little" warm. He stated that the bottom of the freezer drawer would stay frozen, but the top freezer drawer wouldn't. The fridge portion would get a little warm.

Get it home and find everything "working". Let it run for an hour and check with temp gun. No air movement inside the fridge. Look at evaporator fan and its not moving.

Disconnect fan and check for voltage signal. 12V to the plug. fan doesn't "feel" locked up, but IDK what a new one feels like to compare it to. Plug in fan and system goes wonky and everything shuts off. I mean everything. Lights, compressor, door dispense functions.

It goes into a factory trouble shoot mode. The door dispenser display blinks a code, I cannot find reference to code display anywhere on the internets, other than the factory alpha codes that are in the owners manual.

Unplug evaporator fan, and system turns on and everything works. Double check my hypothesis and issue is repeatable. Order new Evap fan for more than they should be, and we will wait.

Told my wife that $400 more in parts in it is still about 50% a new fridge.
 
"Most" of those fans are 110 volt so you could check it with outlet power with a "test cord" Motor should be marked most are.
I have recently had a fridge problem with a suspect evap fan which turned out to be good when tested.
Ohm meter is your friend too. My problem turned out to be the defrost heater. Open circuit.
24 bucks and shipping. Fixed it.

G_Luck
 
Last edited:
Chriselalto said:
Came across a fridge on Marketplace that was at a stupid low price. $1800 Retail and 2.5 years old, bought for a couple bones.

Seller stated that the fridge gets a "little" warm. He stated that the bottom of the freezer drawer would stay frozen, but the top freezer drawer wouldn't. The fridge portion would get a little warm.

Get it home and find everything "working". Let it run for an hour and check with temp gun. No air movement inside the fridge. Look at evaporator fan and its not moving.

Disconnect fan and check for voltage signal. 12V to the plug. fan doesn't "feel" locked up, but IDK what a new one feels like to compare it to. Plug in fan and system goes wonky and everything shuts off. I mean everything. Lights, compressor, door dispense functions.

It goes into a factory trouble shoot mode. The door dispenser display blinks a code, I cannot find reference to code display anywhere on the internets, other than the factory alpha codes that are in the owners manual.

Unplug evaporator fan, and system turns on and everything works. Double check my hypothesis and issue is repeatable. Order new Evap fan for more than they should be, and we will wait.

Told my wife that $400 more in parts in it is still about 50% a new fridge.
Click to expand...
Don’t disconnect and reconnect components with the refrigerator plugged up (not saying you did). Ohm the old motor out when the new one arrives. It could be an open winding if it did not feel stiff when you attempted to spin it. One thing to remember is many refrigerators require the door switch closed to provide power to evaporator motors so if you have the door open when taking a reading press the door switch in.
 
The seller stated that the fridge would freeze the bottom shelf but not the top. The evap fan is directly behind the upper shelf. If the fan was running, the shelf would freeze. No air movement and just ambient freezing would leave me to believe the fan not working.

Also, if the fan is not the culprit, I would move next to the Thermometer on the evaporator coil. This is known with GE fridges to cause similar symptoms. I will ohm the thermometer today.

When I ohm'd out the fan, I did notice a dead spot when I was turning the fan at the same time.

I cannot confirm if this fan is operated in a variable speed style. The plug is 4 wires. I have heard of some units operating at varying voltages for different fan speeds.
 
On a side note, for those that run small generators to run household appliances, make sure your genny is running at the correct hz output. My garage fridge stop working twice in the last couple of years, both times it was the start capacitor / relay on the compressor. Got to thinking and both times I had used the genny on the house when we lost power the day before we noticed the fridge stopped cooling. Checked the generator and low and behold it was running at 67hz output. Adjusted the throttle control so that with no load it ran at 62hz. Hopefully next time I wont fry the fridge.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom