85178L Amana Refrigerator - Instructions

An easy job for smaller hands. Removed the two bolts holding the light cover. Removed two electrical connections from the old switch by pinching the retaining clip,removed the switch, snapped in the new one and re-attached the connectors. Your online illustrations helped me to know that the plastic housing for the light switch would only swing down so far and was not intended to be removed. Saved me from breaking that plastic cover's tabs. This home repair saved me more than 5 times the cost of hiring a professional to do it. Very happy homeowner.

rmv panel (5min) rmv fan/motor 3 screws (10 m) cut wire 2in from motor, re route remainder of wire to front so can strip for wire nuts. ( 10m) attach old fan to new motor, place in old opening ,3 screws, a little fussy to align, ( 15m ) route and strip wire from new motor , zip ties work well, wire nuts , plug in fridge vola, no noise, close up, reverse panel. ( 20m). i also took time to clean grilles with small vac and damp rag, ( looks and sounds like new) bob Wi.

Turned off water supply and unplugged appliance. Removed lower panel on back of refrigerator with 1/4 " nutdriver. Then removed supply line, and line to icemaker. removed valve from back panel and replaced with new valve. wrapped water connections with teflon tape, turned on supply line, checked for leaks, everything o.k..Replaced back panel and in 45 minutes had first drop of ice. Job requires moderate mechanical ability and minimum tools. Saved a PANT load of money by doing it myself. VERY satisfied with Partselect.com

The tiny piece of plastic that holds the wire that shuts off the icemaker, broke early on with our fridge (after just a few months.) We superglued it, but last week it bit the dust for good.

Once I got this part, I removed the freezer door and trays, and pulled the icemaker out by removing 3 flathead screws and unplugging the cables. Laying in the freezer on the floor was a bit unconfortable, but not too bad.

Then I inspected the icemaker. There was no obvious way to remove the part without disassembling the front of the unit (where the motor is) to release the spindle and free the part, so I did that - 3 or 4 nuts was all that held it together. Once that was out, I removed the spindle, swapped out the part, and put it all back together and back in the freezer. Plugged it in and waited.

It took a while to start making ice. Like 5 hours. Now it's going pretty slow (much slower than before.) Haven't had time to look into it, but my suspicion is the rubber hose that feeds water into the icemaker is blocked with ice or kinked. In any case, we have ice now (but not a lot), and the unit shuts itself off properly. However, we went from having too much ice (thing never shut off) to too little (thing makes ice too slow), so I need to shoot for somewhere in the middle ;)

Once I saw the replacement part I understood how to pry out the switch with a small screwdriver. Then just unplug the old one, plug in the new one and pop it into place.

The PartSelect site made it easy to correctly identify the correct part, it was inexpensive, and the shipping was fast.

I'm very pleased!

This is a bottom freezer refrigerator. First I unplugged the refrigerator. I then removed the wire shelf and wire tray from the freezer. I then removed the ice maker be removing the three screws that hold it in place. I then disconnected the icemaker electrical connector. I then removed the 7 screws that hold the panel at the back of the freezer revealing the evaporator and heat exchanger. I then unclipped the icemaker wiring harness from the panel. The whole evaporator/heat exchanger was buried in ice. I defrosted it with a hairdryer. This took about half an hour. The bi-metal thermostat is attached to the heat exchanger by a clip. Be sure to wear latex gloves to prevent cutting your fingers on the aluminum fins. I disconnected the electrical connectors and then carefully unclipped the thermostat. I discovered that the new thermostat had spade connectors where as the original had one spade connector and a bullet connector on the brown wire. I reused the original bullet connector by cutting it off the old thermostat and splicing it onto the new thermostat. I reversed the process for reassembly. There is no longer any ice build up and the refrigerator is working normally.

Remove the back hardboard cover screws for access to the condenser fan. I opted to tip the fridge over on its side for even better access to the fan mounts and wire. Replaced the fan assy (reused the fan). Splice the wire and it's done.

loosened the little bolts around the door that held the old gaskets in place. Removed the old gaskets, installed the new ones and tighten the bolts. Very important to let the gaskets settle after you take them out of the box because they are all crumpled up and the door doesn't seal right. Even after I let them settle and used a hair dyer to straighten them out, they were still a little crumpled when I put them on and the door didn't seal right. I just used the hair drier some more on the gaskets while they were on the door and they popped right back into shape and the doors sealed perfectly. Fridge and freezer work much better now. No more condensation forming around the fridge and the food stays nice and dry now.

For about $100 and 1.5 hours of work, I have a great working fridge and freezer and saved about $500 for a new unit!!!

My husband replaced the condenser fan. It took awhile and a few choice words but he got it replaced. The fan seemed to work fine, but it still wasn't cooling. I noticed that when we had the fridge unplugged that water started draining out the dials at the top of the fridge under the freezer. And there was absolutely no water at all in the drip pan under the fridge. So I took the doors off and totally took the inside of the freezer apart. I discovered that the styrofoam on the floor of the freezer had become inudated with fluid and the under the foam the coils were all frozen solid with ice. Hence not allowing any drainage. I put a lamp in the freezer area and defrosted all the ice. In searching the internet i discovered that they no longer produce the foam so i went to home depot and got a piece of foam and aluminum foil and cut it to replace the ruined foam. I put the fridge all back together said a prayer and crossed my fingers and lo and behold it works perfectly now!!!!

First I removed the Ice bin, I then loosened the ice bin rail under the ice maker and removed the screw that attached the bottom of the ice maker to the side of the fridge. I unplugged the power to Ice Maker from the back of the fridge and unscreewed the two screws that secured the ice maker to the fridge. This allowed the Ice Maker to be removed from the fridge. To replace the new ice maker I simply repeated the steps in reverse.

I saw on a partselect web site that these symptoms could be caused by a failed condensor fan motor. After removing the cardboard panel in back of the refrigerator I noticed the fan was not running when the rfigerator was. The fan was held in place by three brackets. I unscrewed the screws holding the fan motor to the brackets and also unscrewed one of the brackets to make room to pull the motor out. I cut the wires close to the motor. I removed the fan blade and secured it to the new motor. I had to reroute the old wires in order to have enough slack to use wire nuts to attach them to the leads on the new motor. I then re-attached the motor to the two brackets remaining in place and then re-attacehed the third bracket I had removed to get the motor out.. The most difficult part was working in a very confined space.

After moving the refrigerator away from the wall I removed the cover on the lower back of the unit by removing the screws that held it in place. The condenser fan was not turning and there was heat build up in the area causing the refrigerator to not work properly creating elevated temperatures in both the freezer and regrigerator. Removal of three torx screws from the original motor was all it took to get the motor free. By turining it and working the fan blade around the mounting bracket I had the motor out in just a few minutes. Replacing the new motor was just as easy to reinstall. The fan was removed from the old motor and placed on the new for installation. The original motor was wired to accept a connector from the wiring harness of the refrigerator. I simply cut the connector off the wiring harness and stripped the insulation from the wires which easily allowed me to connet the wires of the motor and harness with two wire nuts. Three self tapping screws were used to hold the motor in place replacing the torx screws. Installed I plugged the unit in and immediately the fan started spinning as the unit came to life. Cleaned and replaced the cover over the back and slid back into its spot. Running as good as it did when it was new. Easy job to take care of.

Philips head screwdriver and ten minutes was all it took! I removed the two screws that hold the icemaker assembly in place, then pulled it out a little and disconnected the electrical plug freeing the icemaker assembly. Then I snapped the external parts off my old icemaker assembly and snapped them on the new icemaker assembly. Installing the new icemaker assembly was just as fast and easy. I snapped the electrical plug into the new icemaker assembly, then screwed in the two screws. It was making ice shortly thereafter. Glob free ice! I'm glad I didn't call a repairman. I probably saved a hundred bucks. A ten year old could accomplish this simple and easy task. No wonder the Maytag repairman has time on his hands.

There is already a lot of good advice on this web site and others on how to diagnose and do this repair. I'll add a few additional comments that might be helpful.

I wanted to confirm that my old thermostat was in fact bad. I did this by disconnecting the two connectors and connecting them to each other to bypass the thermostat. This is like having the thermostat always closed. With the back panel still open so I could see the frozen coils I plugged the fridge back in and turned the defrost timer knob with a screwdriver to get to a defrost cycle. I could then see the heater element slowly melting the ice. This is of course not a safe way to operate the fridge. Over time this would get too hot and damage the food or worse. I only did this for a few minutes to see the system operating. I did not melt all the ice at that time. Also, it is of course dangerous to plug the fridge in with the panel open, so a great deal of caution is advised.

When I got my new thermostat I wanted to confirm that it worked before going through the install procedure. To do this I cooled it down and then used an ohm-meter to see that the circuit was closed. The important thing I found out is that ice-water, even 2 parts ice, one part cold water, was not cold enough to do this. Only when I put the thermostat into a cold freezer for a while did it get cold enough to close the circuit. I did this side by side with my old thermostat and saw that it was in face bad -it never closed the circuit.

This part from Part Select was an exact match for this freezer-on-bottom Whirlpool refrigerator. The connectors were identical so I did not have to solder wires together as others have need to do.

Some people get the ice off of the coils with a hair dryer. For me this could take half an hour. What worked better and much faster was spraying warm water on the ice with an old spray bottle. This adds extra water to the mix, but it did not overflow the drain pan. Even if it did, it would be easily mopped up if you can roll the fridge out.

One last thing. I suspect this thermostat broke in the winter, but with the dry air the fridge worked for a long time. Once summer hit and the house got humid, the coils iced up quickly.

Good Luck!

I used board levers to do one side at a time.Kinda tricky, but you can hoist up fridge high enough to replace wheels. take your time think it out and be safe . Make sure you use saftey boards to support load to protect yourself==good luck A small mirror may help to see how the rollers alien in the supports.