GSHL5MGXBELS General Electric Refrigerator - Instructions

I used a digital camera and photographed the assembled unit and the metal blades before I started the repair. Then, I removed the top screw on the clear shield. Flip over ice tray and removed two Phillips screws on bottom. Exterior plastic white cover comes off next. The cover sides have hard push-in white plastic tabs. Push them in; pry up top cover with small flathead screwdriver. Slide white top cover up and you will now see the metal blades and assembly. Auger is held in place with a metal c-clip and washer on the end. Use flat head screwdriver to pry off c-clip. Then you will see a nylon round slotted nut. The threads are reverse, use pliers and loosen nut. It is not that tight but pliers are needed. Then it all is loose and ready for removal. I slid all the blades off at one time and kept them stacked together. Slide out auger and clear flat shield cover. Install new auger, clear shield, and metal blade stack. When you put it all back together take a look at the long metal J-hook on the bottom make sure it is in the slot before you make everything tight. Failing to do this will prevent cubed ice from dispensing.
It is not that hard to do the repair it just takes some patience and paying attention to details.

After replacing the defrost heater, main board and thermistor I still had the same problem. Called a repair guy and he (with the help of GE on the phone) diagnosed that the temperature sensor was bad. So I ordered from partselect and installed it and it fixed the problem. Been good for a couple months (knocking on wood). To install I had to cut the 2 wires to the old sensor, crimp the 2 new wires on and snap the new sensor to the clip on the evaporator. Very easy. Make sure you seal the ends of the wire crimps so moisture doesn't get in and corrode the connection.

After checking the stories, the consensus of opinion was to change the mother board. I had a tremendous help from Tom Paone at quality@applianceeducator.com. He also told me to change the motherboard but to make sure that the coils were totally defrosted before starting up the refrigerator after changing the board.

Took off three nuts around the board at the back of the unit. Removed the input wires and you have to push in the plastic tabs holding the board in. Then just put the new board in place and push till the tabs click. Re-install the wires and put the cover back on.

Really simple task,

It is now a week since doing this and the unit is working perfectly. No soulds and good nights sleep. The ghost has moved on.

The flap to the ice dispenser would not close, which allowed the ice dispenser to frost up, freezing the water dispenser.

This was a simple fix. The solenoid had stopped working, so it would not automatically close the door flap. I read some posts on this site that suggest that you had to remove the trim around the entire dispenser to get at the solenoid. My fridge may be a newer model, but in any event it was much easier than that. Just below the touch pad for choosing water, ice, or crushed ice (above where the ice/water dispenses) there are three very small holes spaced about an inch a part. After unplugging the fridge, I stuck a small philips-head screw driver in each, freeing spring clips. That allowed the touch pad to come off. I then removed four screws to remove a plastic piece covering the chute, giving me access to the flap and solenoid. I just unplugged the solenoid from the circuit board on the back of the touch pad and then removed three screws to remove the old solenoid. I replaced it with the new solenoid and plugged it into the circuit board. The touch pad then snapped back into place.

The hardest part was figuring out how to get at the solenoid. After I found that pushing the clips in those three holes allowed me to remove the touch pad, it could not be any easier.

Swapping out the ice dispenser damper door was pretty easy- just used a combination of screwdrivers to remove the dispenser assembly, popped the old damper off, put the new damper on. Replacing the control board was only a bit more complicated- unplugged the fridge, removed the control board metal cover (beware the somewhat sharp edges), unhooked all the cables from the board, used needle-nose pliers to pinch each plastic spacer/fastener as to not damage them while removing the old board, mounted the new board where the old board was, and plugged in all the cables (they were all different enough from each other that I didn't have any trouble figuring out where they were supposed to connect). I now have my fridge plugged into a surge protector- hopefully that will protect this new board I've installed. Thanks a bunch,PartSelect.

I went to a GE repair center to explain my problem, the service center reccomended that I have a techinician come out o look at it. $75.00 for the visit and what ever labor and materials wuld cost.

I went on line to see if there were others having this same problem and found that there were many with the same problem.

After reading some of the ways that people found out what was wrong ...it became a matter of three components, the timer, heater or thermostat.

I tried the most common component and the less expensive one first , the thermostat switch I installed it very easily snipping two wires and attaching the news using wire nuts I used the diagram on this website to pinpoint the component and there has not been a problem since.

The ice dispenser would not dispense cubes. It only dispensed crushed ice. Also the plastic auger was partially broken and it took forever for ice to be dispensed. The auger was easy to figure out that it was broken. The dispenser issue took some time. I removed the ice bin and removed the panel behind it. There was a solenoid that burnt and melted and this did not allow the dispenser door to be controlled. I ordered the parts on a Thursday and they arrived on a Friday. Pretty simple to fix once I knew what the problem was. I could have gotten the parts cheaper from Searsparts.com but their description of parts and their pictures did not match and I wanted to make sure I got the right parts the first time. To be on the safe side I ordered a couple of pins and used one of them. The pin was a little hard to remove from the existing assemble so I put it in a vice and used a small pick and hammered out the old pin.

My repair experience was a little more complicated than previous posts, but nothing major. And most importantly replacing the Fresh Food Air Inlet Cover did fix my problem. Here are the steps I followed:
1. You will need to remove a minimum of the top two shelves to get access to the Air Inlet Cover. It runs along the back of the fridge and connects to a hole to the freezer side. It has a little fan inside that sucks the cold air from the freezer and diverts to the top and bottom of the fridge.
2. As mentioned in other posts, there are four screws holding the Inlet Cover in place, 2 lower and 2 upper. To get access to the lower two screws,you simply pop off the lower duct assembly (squeeze the sides). Be careful when removing and installing these screws. If you drop one into the lower duct, you will add a few more steps to the installation to remove more shelves and take out the lower duct to get to where the screw fell. Obviously this happened to me. Not difficult to do, just adds more time.
3. To access the upper two screws I had to remove the top light cover (one screw) and then slide out the top duct/diffuser assy (my name, not GE's).
4. Finally to get clearance to pull out the Inlet Cover, I had to remove the water filter and cover. When you pull away the Inlet Cover, you will see the electrical connection that is simple to disconnect.
5. After I removed my Inlet Cover, it was obvious that it was broken because it rattled and I could peek inside to see that the plastic air diverter/flapper thingy was broken.
6. One final surprise was that the replacement Air Inlet Cover did not exactly match the one I removed. The replacement only had one upper air outlet, while my old one had three upper outlets, left, right and center. I noticed there was a plastic cover over one of the side outlets on the replacement, so I just popped that off and hoped for the best.
7. The replacement Air Inlet Cover Kit came with sticky back insulation that you attach to where the Inlet Cover meet the freezer access hole to make sure snug fit to limit extra cold air leaking into the fridge side.
8. Installation of the replacement Air Inlet Cover was fairly easy, just follow the above steps in reverse and make sure you don't drop any screws.
It's been a couple of weeks since I performed this installation and my fridge has been maintaining temperature perfectly. No more frozen milk or lettuce. The wife is very happy.

I read in a previous post how to do the job from outside fridge which saved me lots of time. No need to remove inner door lining. Here is my procedure:
1.Turned off power. 2.Snapped off outside trim ring. 3.Located three small holes inside lip just above ice tube. The center hole was not used. 4.Pushed rather firmly up through two remaining holes with small Allen wrench to release front control panel. 5.Removed (3) wire connectors from printed circuit board. Firmly pull/pry them straight out as lifting on retaining clip will break it off. I broke one & had to elect. tape it back in place later although I doubt it would have ever come off. 6.Release secondary panel by removing (4) screws. The problem was obvious as the solenoid had broken the crank arm off the flapper rod & trapped it open 7.Replaced solenoid, crank arm with flapper attached, spring & micro switch. Switch was okay but I changed anyway. 8.Cleaned all areas with 1/10 bleach water to sanitize. 9.Re-installed evrything in reverse order & all is okay. Thanks to someone for telling about those two small holes. Made job easy versus a very hard one.

Unplug refrigerator. First I removed 3 screws to remove cover for Board ASM Main located on back of refrigerator then loosen Board by pressing on each of 4 plastic pins then unscrew ground wire (green) then transfer all plugs from old Board to new Board, put back new board through pins, screw back ground wire then put back cover then plug back refrigerator, took 5 minutes

I removed the old temperature sensor by cutting the wires. I attached the wires of the new sensor with wire nuts and mounted it in the same bracket.

First of all, the larger white plastic tubes in this thing are 5/16" OD, which no plumbing store seems to stock. At the lower left rear end there are 2 tubes, one for water and one for ice, that are doomed to fail being in proximity of a heat source - they essentially get cooked to the point of becoming brittle and cracking. The smaller tube and union can be easily found, but do yourself a favor if the larger one cracks and order the plastic tube and water tube union here, and just cut off the brittle part and amend the old tube using the union.

1. Turn-off water
2. Removed drawers and bottom three shelfs
3. Remove screw inside refrige that is holding the water tank in place
4. Remove bottom front grate on fridge (2 screws) and disconnect water line from quick disconnect (residual water will run out of line)
5. Remove bottom cover on back of fridge
6. Disconnect water line from quick disconnect on bottom left side when looking from the back of the fridge (residual water will run out of line)
7. Remove water tank from inside of fridge
8. Install new water tank - install screw that hold water tank in position
9. Route lines through hole and to the two locations you removed the old ones
10. Install both lines by pushing them all the way in the quick disconnects. Pull on them to make sure they are secure.
11. Turn on water and look for leaks
12. Reinstall bottom front grate (2 screws)
13. Reinstall back cover (5 or 6 screws)
14. Install shelfs and drawers inside fridge

1) Removed the ice bin and emptied the ice.
2) Removed 5 screws total
3) (hardest part) JImmied a flat blade screwdriver into the left top side of the housing and pried gently to disengage the plastic holding clip. This only allows the left side of the housing to move up about a half-inch. Did the same on the right side and 'walked' the assembly out of the bin.
4) Removed the C clip and washer that holds the auger. and removed the auger assembly.
5) Before removing the screw at the end of the assembly, it is a good idea to take pictures of the ice crushing part of the assembly so that it goes back on correctly.
6) Removed the screw and carefully stacked the ice crush blades and washers.
7) Installed the ice crush blades on the new auger, re-installed the screw, washer and C clip.
8) Re-assembly is easy, you just need to set the end of the auger in the back of the ice bin and slowly re-install the housing portion.

First unplug then remove all food and the ice cubes from the freezer only..Then removed the traysand then the 2 panel screws. Defrosted the coils with a hair dryer,removed the 2 screws holding the heater and then unplugged the wires from each side.Installed the new heater and now has been fine for 12 days now..The sensor- I just spliced it in the exact way the old sensor was wired.All seems fine so far. Was alot cheaper to buy the parts and install myself than to pay for 1 service call..