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Refrigertor water dispenser not working BUT ice machine is working
The very first symptom here is important! The door water dispenser is not working but the ice macine is working. You may only have a frozen water tube in the door so do the following before diagnosing that your solenoid valve is bad: 1) the tube usually runs under the front of the refrigerator and usually has a quick disconnect. Undo the connection and press the dispenser. If water comes out of the tube you have a frozen or blocked tube in the door. 2) Immediately adjust the temperature in the freezer and warm the freezer compartment as much as you can without destroying the freezer contents. Wait 24 hours. This will usually unfreeze the line. Do not waste your time with a hair dryer. NOW, if this doesn't work and you are convinced you need to order and replace the solenoid, follow these steps. Assemble your tools first. I needed a good ratchet set and a screwdriver. A shop towel is helpful for spilled water. A light is handy. Pull out the refreigerator to gain access to the rear of the unit. Unplug the power and close the water valve (older homes, you may need to actually shut the house water supply). Remove the screws which hold the cover over the lower half of the refrigerator. On the left you will see the solenoid. It's always good to see that your new part matches the one you feel needs replaced. They may not match perfectly due to changing design but they should be very similar. One screw holds this part in place and access is very simple. Now simply unplug the electrical connections. In my case, one blue "blade" type connection (powering the water) and one red "blade" type connection powering the ice maker. They are not the same size and this coupled with the coloring means you will not accidently switch them. pull the tubes clear of the solenoid. This is simple and needs no explantion. Grab your new solenoid and reattach both the electrical and water lines (two, remember, ice maker and drink dispencer). Replace the single screw. Re-attach the rear, lower refrigerator cover and go to the front of the unit to check the water. You can listen carefully and hear the power engage from the new part bringing you water. Clean up, replace the refrigerator back to its place and look really tired when your wife sees that you worked "so hard"! You probably saved at least $50-$80 from a service call which can now be used to take the family to dinner after your "exhausting" 15 minute workout of removing about 10 screws and wheeling the unit in and out of place. Writing this article took longer! My 4 year old worked harder holding the flash light!
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Fridge too warm, evaporator icing up
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.
my refigerator was warm but the freezer was cold and working correcttly
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.
Model includes filtered ice maker and water dispenser from front of unit. Water maker just suddenly stopped working but ice maker continued to work fine. After some phone calls to trouble shoot at a high level, I figured it was worth a try to buy the replacement part of the most likely culprit and see if it did the trick. Would have cost maybe $150 or more for service tech to make house call, provide the part and do the switch. Buying the part was only $40 and replacement was easy. Remove access panel from behind fridge and identify valve. It has intake water from the filter then has two outbound lines. One to ice maker, one to water dispenser. All function is in one part, but each outbound line has its own functioning valve. Unplug fridge, turn off water supply, disconnect all connections from old valve and reattach to new valve. When re-hooked, be patient in allowing water to re-fill line before coming out of dispenser in front. Likely to doubt it works, but surprised how long it took for water to fill line resevoir.
Unplugged the refrigerator, turned off the water supply, and then removed the back cover/access plate. Observed and made wiring notes to ensure I install the part correctly. Unscrewed the bracket holding the water valve assembly, and lifted it up to see and remove the three water lines (one input, two output). The input or supply line is a compression fitting...just use an adjustable wrench to loosen the nut and lift off the line. Then remove the two output lines by depressing or pushing in on the white plastic rings that surround those two holes ...the lines just slide out, but you have to push in on those rings. Remove the two electrical connectors...just wiggle them off One connector was very stubborn but it eventually came off. Try to be gentle, and pull on the connector heads...not on the electrical wires. Assemble the lines and electrical connectors on to the new part. The two output water lines just slide in...you dont need to push in on the rings. You'l feel them seat into the valve. Don't worry. Put it all back the way you found it, turn on the water supply, and plug in the power cord. Check for leaks. I had no leaks and was very pleased. This is so easy a chimp can do it, but let everyone think otherwise! No biggie.
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.
Flapper Door Stuck Open Allowing Ice Tube To Frost Shut
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.
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
freezer clod-fridge warm, coils were frosting up cutting off air flow
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..
ice stalactites were drooling out of the icemaker and gumming up the cubes in the receiving tray.
I first shut off water flow to the fridge. Examination of the package (which was not exact in appearance to the original) demonstrated that the electrical connectors were well-insulated so I arrogantly and successfully proceded without disconnecting the power. My fridge is old enough that the model doesn't appear exactly on anyone's list so I wasn't alarmed that it took an extra 10 minutes or so to noodle out how to adapt the slightly different inlet cowling and electrical cord with extension, but the device is pretty simple. Soon I loosened the two mounting screws with a nut driver, used a screwdriver to pry away the plastic snap-in housing over the electrical socket on the fridge inner wall and pulled away the electrical plug. The original water fill tube remained in its cavity, ready for re-use. The new unit's mounting points matched the original screw locations perfectly, as did the fill cowling - which on the replacement icemaker has two possible attachment points. The new unit's electrical connector required an extension pigtail to adapt to my socket, but it was included in the package. The extra cable posed a minor cosmetic issue because it hangs in the collection basket a bit, but that will soon be remedied with a tie wrap. After the water was restored and an anxious wait of a few hours, we had well-formed ice cubes that weren't all stuck together and the stalactites haven't reappeared.
A week earlier, we had frozen water all over the freezer section which obviously dripped from the icemaker. We turn off the icemaker and cleaned the freezer. Upon turning the icemaker back on, water continuously pours out of the ice tray. This time, even turning off the icemaker does not stop the water from flowing through. I checked and cleaned the water valve, reinstalled it and it still does not work. I had to crimp the water line and even remove the water filter to make sure there will be no water leaks.
When I got the new water valve, installation was a snap as I have already removed the old one. After installing the new valve and putting back the filter, everything is back to normal.
Procedure for removing/replacing the water valve: (1) Unplug the refrigerator and move it so that you have some working space in the back. If there is a mechanical valve in the water line, close it so that when the hoses are unplugged, there will be no spills. If there is no mechanical water valve, you can simply crimp the hose with a rubber band or a cable tie. (2) Use an adjustable wrench or a screw driver to remove the screws on the bottom panel. My refrigerator has 4 big screws and 1 small one that is used to anchor the water hose. (3) Pull the panel up slightly to remove it. The water valve is mounted with one screw at the bottom-left corner. (4) Use a screwdriver to dismount the water valve. (5) Unplug the electrical connections to the water valve. My refrigerator has one Brown and one Blue connector. Remember which plug goes to which connector. (6) Place a towel under the water valve and use the adjustable wrench to remove the main hose connection. (7) Next, remove the hoses that to into the water valve outlets. On my refrigerator, these hoses are of different sizes and have quick-disconnects. I simply have to press on the collar at end of the hose, pushing it towards the valve to release the hose, then pull on the hose. (8) Prepare the new water valve by removing the plastic cover that protects the connector for the main water line. (9) Connect the main water line to the new valve using the adjustable wrench. (10) Connect the two hoses of different sizes to the valve. You only have to push them all the way into each valve and slightly tug on them to make sure they are locked in place. (11) Re-connect the Brown and Blue electrical connectors to their original location. (12) Mount the new water valve into the back of the refrigerator (one screw). (13) If possible, quickly check that the new valve is working properly: If you have a mechanical valve in the water line, open it and make sure there are no leaks near the valve or inside in the icemaker. You may have to plug in the refrigerator power to complete the initial test. (14) Replace the back panel with the 4 screws and anchor the hose to the back with 1 screw. (15) Once everything is back in its place and the refrigerator is on, cycle the water dispenser several times to run fresh water into the hoses and the new valve.
I unplugged the electrical connection. Then I removed the 2 screws holding the icemaker in place. I lifted out the old icemaker unit and put the new one in place. Then put the 2 screws back in and plugged in the new unit.
The icemaker started making ice very soon after turning the unit on.
