ARB2117BW (PARB2117BW0) Amana Refrigerator - Instructions

Turned off water supply, removed old Water Valve, installed new Water Valve, turned water supply back on. After first couple cycles of icemaker, increased water pressure by opening water supply valve one more full turn. Good cubes! Job completed in about 1 hour - moving fridge out, swapping Water Valve, moving fridge back in. (time to clean coils not included)

I removed the shelves from the freezer. I unscrewed 6 screws with a 1/4" nut driver and removed the back panel. The coil was solid ice because the defrost cycle wasn't working. I thawed the ice with a hairdryer (5 minutes), unplugged the thermostat and installed the new one (it simply clipped on to the coils), and reassembled the back panel and installed the shelves. Total time, about 14 minutes. Total cost, less than $20.00. I can't even get an appliance repairman to show up at my door for less than $100.00! Thanks to your website, I was able to diagnose my problem, order the correct part and fix it myself! (I bookmarked your site under my favorites). Thanks for this great consumer service. It's easy, inexpensive and quick to do it yourself!

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!

Other stories I've read here speak to difficulty of changing a gasket with the door on the appliance. Whoa! Take the door off, tape cardboard over the opening, lay the door on its back and proceed. You will avoid racking or twisting the door and having the new gasket fit worse than the old. You can also thaw ice which often forms inside a door over time. Reinstall the door taking pains to shim properly so the new gasket is not overcompressed or allowing a gap. A dollar bill is a good gauge. It should resist a bit as it is pulled out after closing the door on it. This was not exactly step-by-step, just offered as advice from a whole bunch of experience.

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 ;)

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.

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!

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.

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.

I removed all the food items from the door. I removed the old gasket by loosening up the screws at the top of the door. The rest of the old gasket pulled out easily from the rest of the door. While the gasket was off, I took the time to clean up the door. I startede at the top of the door, loosening up the screws but not removing them. I then replaced each side of the door seperately. I found it helpful to have a flat blade to help poke the gasket into place. Because I was in the kitchen, I used a metal spatula. The corners were the trickiest. Using a hand held hair dryer helped to soften the gasket when it became cold. The freezer and fridge have good seals now and the refrigerator is good as new.

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 fridge is in great shape but the seals/gaskets were shot. Between me, the wife and the kids the fridge door seemed like it was in constant motion.

Measue the seals, NOT THE DOOR. I measued from the straightest part of the seal at the edges and came within an quarter of an inch of what was offered here.

You have to take the seal off in stages, if you loosen all of the screws, the door will fall apart. Pick an edge (I started at the top) undo all of the screws and pull the old gasket off.

Then put the new gasket on the top (loosen a couple of screws on the sides if you can't get it to fit) and use a putty knife or a dull butter knife to sit it in place.

Once the top is in, screw the top screws back in and then take out the screws on the next side that you will work on. Go around the rest of the door the same way.

This is not a hard job, but it does have a pain in the rear factor. You have to move quick, especially on the freezer, but once you get the hang of it , it gets easy. But until you get the hang of it, you will be using some four letter words:)

I hope it extends the life of my fridge by another five years, so it is worth the money if the fridge is expensive. It will probably cost $100 or so for 2 seals (in my case a fride and a freezer seal), so if your fridge isn't worth the cost, you would probably be better off replacing the entire fridge.