ARB2117BS (PARB2117BS0) 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.

I noticed the the freezer was beginning to thaw out and the refrigerator was no longer cooling. Due to the age of the refrigerator I thought that it couldn't be anything too major so I sought out some advice and order the necessary parts through partselect.com The problem was the thermostat in the freezer and changing out was pretty simple. The website offers some good advice along with quick delivery which makes attempting the repairs worthwhile. I would definitely use partselect.com again for any other appliance repairs!

After the backordered gasket arrived, I took it out of the box and placed it over the back of a kitchen chair and used the hair dryer to get the shipping kinks out of the gasket. After unloading the door of the Freezer compartment, I made a temporary door from a piece of styrofoam board. After removing all of the screws holding the gasket and inner panel to the door, I removed the inner panel and took it outside to melt the ice acumulated on the back and to install the new gasket. I removed the old gasket, and installed the new one over the edges of the panel carefully to avoid tearing the gasket and make sure it was evenly laid out on the panel. This installation went easily because I took the time to see how the old gasket was on the door before I removed it.
I then scewed the panel with the new gasket to the door of the freezer. Once back on the refridgerator, I used the hair dryer and a dull putty knife to get the edge of the gasket pressing firmly against the refridgerator frame. This last step was critical, because the gasket was distorted by the packing and storage of the gasket in the shipping box. I was not satisfied with the amount of magnetic pull from the new gasket and used Vasaline Jelly to create a better seal with the refridgerator.

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.

Turn water and refrigerator off, use hair to thaw the ice maker filler tube, then remove the filler tube inside the freezer. Next remove the water supply line cover plate in back of the refrigerator. Now remove the speed clip at the white pvc elbow and pull out the supply line. Next, grasp the pvc elbow with pliers and pull hard to remove. The new filler tube is a 1 piece design (filler tube and elbow combined) and needs to be cut to the proper length. Mark it inside the freezer, remove it and cut to length. Now coat the outside flange with caulk or PU glue and snap into the opening. Put the speed clip on the elbow first and center it. Ensure that the spreader insert is in place in the plastic tube, then slide the supply line into the elbow untill completely engaged. Replace cover.

very easy.....
1. removed the food items from the shelf
2. raised the shelf and removed the broken support post
3. inserted the new support post and guided the drawer rails to rest in the new support slots
4. cleaned the glass shelf and replaced the food items
5. made my wife very happy now that the veg drawer opens and closed like new.

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.

The ordering was easy, however the installing was very difficult. Screws all around door had to not only be loosened but most had to be removed in order to get gasket behind the lip. We (my 17 yr old daughter and I )unscrewed the top and half way down the the sides and did half and half. The job took us approx 4 hrs. In all fairness neither one of us has every done anything like this and we were very proud of ourselves for accomplishing the task. When the gasket was in place we used the blow drying to smooth the gasket. Probably not anything I would attempt again because of the time committment, however, I was trying to save some money.

Someone suggested removing the door, however, I couldn't figure out how to do that. On the up side, it did give me the confidence to replace a screen door myself. You tube helped me with that. ( I couldn't find a "how to" on how to install this gasket at least not for this type of appliance.

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!

The new Ice Maker Assembly arived in less than 24 hours. I was amazed that it came so fast.

I had already removed the old ice maker in order to get the modle number.

I just took two parts off of the old ice maker and quickly snapped them into place on the new ice maker. Then attached it to the refrigerator in less than 10 minutes. With in a few hours I had ice again !!!!!

I would definatly use partselect.com again.

Last night, I replaced the gasket of the bottom freezer drawer on my Amana refrigerator. It took me about 2 hours.

When I took my new gasket out of the package that it was mailed in, it had been folded and was all twisted. There were wrinkles in the area where the actual magnetic seal occurs. I tried to use a hair dryer to smooth out the wrinkles but the hair dryer just wasn't getting hot enough. I decided to install the gasket anyway hoping that the wrinkles would just get stretched out.

First I had to remove the drawer which is explained in the Amana manual. I had to remove two screws on the side the the drawer slides and then lift out the hanger for the door. Pulling out the old gasket was really easy but when I tried to push the new gasket it just wouldn't go in under the lip and I was afraid that it would get torn if I pushed it in with a screwdriver.

So I had to remove all 20 or so screws that hold the white plastic retaining liner in and hold the lip of the gasket. Then I had to slide a flat head screw driver in to lift up the liner and break the gluing effect of the expanding foam insulation used during manufacturing. Once I could freely lift up the liner about 1/4 inch, I was able to push the new liner in. The wrinkles were still there, which would have prevented a good seal. Fortunately I had a heat gun which I tested first on the old gasket. This worked wonderfully after the gasket was fully installed and did not melt the white plastic liner.

Once the gasket was installed and all 20 screws were tightened, I discovered that the door had been twisted a little and the left side of the drawer would hit first leaving a gap on the right side. By pushing on the right side some time it would stay but often it wouldn't. So I loosened the screws that hold the door on to the metal hangers that attached to the glides and then twisted the door while I tightened those screws.

The final fix was to tighten the leveling screws so that the top of the fridge leans back. This is recommended in Amana's instructions but had not been done for our fridge. This causes gravity to pull the drawer closed.

I don't mean to scare anyone away from doing this repair but it ended up being harder than I thought.

First I had to determine what was wrong. Obviously the compressor was working since the freezer was cold. Digging for awhile revealed that the evaporator coils for the freezer had frozen up into a solid block of ice. Then I had to figure out why. Tested the defrost heater in place--small resistance (~3 ohms), OK. Removed and tested the timer--unsure. Removed and tested the defrost thermostat--did not turn on when plunged in ice water or frozen with canned air (turn the can upside down--be careful!, you can instantly freeze-burn your skin), bad. Chose to purchase and replace both the timer and the thermostat. Took the opportunity to THOROUGHLY clean everything, front, back, and underneath. Found the drip tray transition piping cracked at the junction and replaced it with a cut-off funnel "glued" into place and to the underside piping with the RTV Silicone. When parts arrived, tested them and confirmed that the original timer was OK and the thermostat was bad. Installed the new thermostat (and went ahead and installed the new timer). NOTE: one connector on the thermostat was not identical to the orginal equipment. Rather than cut the refrig wiring, I chose to build a jumper with the original connector on one end and a new one for the new thermostat on the other. Buttoned everything back up, re-leveled it, and let it run for 24 hours at the manufacturer's recommended "first" settings (4 and 4) without being disturbed. Seemed fine, loaded it with food, everything is great including non-frozen veggies! (I suspect the ice was forming frequently and blocking the return from the refrig compartment, which is right next to the veggie drawer.)