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ApplianceGuru.com: The Samurai Appliance Repair Forums > Do-It-Yourself Appliance Repair Help > The Kitchen Appliance Repair Forum > Refrigerator stops working if not opened for 2-3 days. |
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| Refrigerator stops working if not opened for 2-3 days. | Rate Topic |
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| Posted: Wed Jun 28th, 2006 03:04 am |
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1st Post |
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guyinfun Grasshopper
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GE Refrigerator, side by side, model: PSS25MGNA-CC History : About 2-3 months ago, I was out for a week. Came back, found frozen water filter(inside the refrigerator). Filter cracked due to ice build. water leaked. I replaced the filter. refrigerator seems to work fine. Current Problem: Problem: Usually the freezer works fine during the normal hours. But if the freezer/Fridge door are not opened for use for a long time ( probably two days, I notice this issue if I spend weekend out of the house), The refrigerator stops working. The food in the freezer section is thawed and you notice good amount of frost on the cooling coil. Once I open the refrigerator again and within minutes it start working again. So life is great when some one keeps opening the doors after a while. What I have done so far. My initial thought was the defrost system is not working fine. So - I changed the melt-down safety thermostat [ didn’t address the issue] - I checked the defrost heater coil. It is fine. Other interesting thing that I noticed is: When ever I open up the freezer compartment door after 7-8 hours, I hear a water running noise like if somebody opened up the tap water. It only last for 5-10 seconds. It appears that water gets accumulated inside (where?) and it gets released once the door is opened. IS IT NORMAL? Is it related to the issue that I am having i.e. if the doors are not opened for approx. two days that means the water evaporated from the food is getting blocked some where causing freezer to stop working (my apologies if this sounds like a dumb question). Replacing the thermostat didn’t address the issue. Any idea what could be wrong? I was thinking to completely replace the motherboard. ( $110) but I am not sure if this will address the issue. I would really appreciate an expert opinion on this? Thanks a lot for taking time to read this.
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| Posted: Wed Jun 28th, 2006 03:25 am |
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2nd Post |
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Jedi Appliance Guy Sublime Master of Appliantology 
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The Force is telling me you should replace your evaporator thermistor. At this point it is merely a guess, but it is a guess based on experience and the price of the part. It is relatively cheap compared to the motherboard. I have solved many intermittent defrost failures this way. I believe water gets into them due to their construction and the temperature swings it endures and that there is no drip trap on the wires. I'm not exactly sure how the lack of door openings could come into play here right now, but maybe the Force will send me a vision. The water noise is normal. Here is a picture of a thermistor with the drip trap added. Last edited on Wed Jun 28th, 2006 03:59 am by Jedi Appliance Guy |
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| Posted: Wed Jun 28th, 2006 09:42 pm |
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3rd Post |
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guyinfun Grasshopper
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Thanks for the reply. I will go ahead and give it a try and will let you know what happened. By the way, how do you check a thermister. checking the continuty between two terminal is not enough right?
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| Posted: Wed Jun 28th, 2006 10:16 pm |
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4th Post |
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jabko Sublime Master of Appliantology 
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Don't overlook the evaporator fan motor, if the frost is due to the fan not running, they have been culprits in this box and some failures on the fan motor can damage the motherboard, just something to keep in mind on this model, if the defrost system is working OK when your home, and the frost appears only when your away, and the door is not openned, this model will also turn on the fan motor if the door is held open for some lenght of time even if it is not running, if you have the model with the digital displays on the fresh food side you can run the dianostic program on the unit. John B.
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| Posted: Thu Jun 29th, 2006 12:38 am |
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5th Post |
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guyinfun Grasshopper
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Thanks for the input. The motor appears to be working fine. and yes the fan starts working if the door is kept open for some time. Refrigerator has a small digital display ( only two buttons and two digit display for setting up max/min temerature for both fresh side and freezer side. How do you run the diagnostic on this unit?
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| Posted: Thu Jun 29th, 2006 01:03 am |
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6th Post |
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Jedi Appliance Guy Sublime Master of Appliantology
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Have we reset this fridge since this behavior started? Hmmmm. The Force is strong in Jabco for he raises an excellent point. An evaporator fan not running will also cause frosting. When you wrote this " The refrigerator stops working. The food in the freezer section is thawed and you notice good amount of frost on the cooling coil. Once I open the refrigerator again and within minutes it start working again" What did you mean by "it starts working again"?. Do you hear the fan or the compressor start? You don't have enough buttons to run diagnostics. Jabco it's 3 minutes with the door open to run the fan in high speed. Step one when electronics are behaving strangely is unplug them for a few minutes to reset them.. Last edited on Thu Jun 29th, 2006 01:05 am by Jedi Appliance Guy |
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| Posted: Thu Jun 29th, 2006 01:29 am |
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7th Post |
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guyinfun Grasshopper
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Have we reset this fridge since this behavior started? Yes. It has been unplugged couple of times. When you wrote this " The refrigerator stops working. The food in the freezer section is thawed and you notice good amount of frost on the cooling coil. Once I open the refrigerator again and within minutes it start working again" Honestly, I don't recall that. All I know is : I heard the sound started (could be from fan and/or compressor. My best guess is, fan definitely started working as, in this unit, the noise from the fan is more prominent then the noise of compressor alone.) and within 1-2 hours. Food started getting cool. It was definitely not working before I opened the door. ( i.e. it was definitely not the case where compressor was working but fan was not.). Regarding the frost: It was melting down at the time when I opened the fridge ( you could see the water drops dripping ). It was probably bad at one time as not only the coils had frost on it. good traces of frost was also visible on the plastic panel that covers the coils Step one when electronics are behaving strangely is unplug them for a few minutes to reset them.. Good advise. I'll keep that in mind in future.
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| Posted: Thu Jun 29th, 2006 02:26 am |
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8th Post |
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jabko Sublime Master of Appliantology
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Should have the correct amount of buttons if he has the selections of colder / warmer with the single window led on both the freezer and fresh food setting, and is able to hold all four buttons in for three seconds should initiate the test cycle, if you have these buttons with the two led windows, email back and I will try to upload the buttons and fucntions used to run the test program. If you need the wiring diagram, I posted it in a earlier post with the link below. http://applianceguru.com/view_topic.php?id=3075&forum_id=1&highlight=jabko
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| Posted: Thu Jun 29th, 2006 02:49 am |
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9th Post |
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guyinfun Grasshopper
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Here is the picture of the digital display. ( my browser some how didnt allow me to email you, I reduced the size of picture to 10K). Attachment: digitalControl.gif (Downloaded 113 times)
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| Posted: Thu Jun 29th, 2006 01:12 pm |
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10th Post |
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jabko Sublime Master of Appliantology
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Do you have a filter reset button anywhere on your display, some models even with the led's need a extra input button to trigger the tests, if you have only the four access buttons to initiate the cycle and no extra buttons you may not be able to run the test without the extra hardware to test it.....I see from the picture it appears you only have the four touch pads.....JB
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| Posted: Thu Jun 29th, 2006 02:13 pm |
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11th Post |
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guyinfun Grasshopper
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Yes I have water filter reset button. It is on the water dispensor pad. Infact, I have couple of extra buttons on that panel (Filter reset, Dispenser light, quick ice, door alarm, lock control). Let me know if you want to see the picture of this section of unit.
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| Posted: Thu Jun 29th, 2006 04:11 pm |
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12th Post |
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jabko Sublime Master of Appliantology
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Will try tonight to convert the book to upload the couple pages covering the trouble shooting features of the built in program, later ,John
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| Posted: Thu Jun 29th, 2006 10:13 pm |
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13th Post |
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jabko Sublime Master of Appliantology
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Uploaded all four needed pages to my sight, links below: http://www.jabko.com/gesxs.jpg http://www.jabko.com/gesxs1.jpg http://www.jabko.com/gesxs2.jpg http://www.jabko.com/gesxs3.jpg Just click on the links and then print out for running the program.. Good luck as someone mentioned above the thermister on the evaporator can sometimes create defrost problems as it reports a higher temp to the main board cutting the defrost cycle short or not at all, and I have tested some and the resistance seems OK but under the working conditions when voltage is applied through it, it reports the wrong temp. a cheap item to replace if in question.........JABKO 
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| Posted: Fri Jun 30th, 2006 02:14 pm |
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14th Post |
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guyinfun Grasshopper
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Thanks a lot for the pictures. You have been very helpful. I ran most of the diagnostics (Fan test, Defrost cycle test, communication tests, and thermisters tests). It passed all. I have already replaced the evaporator thermistor. I am going out for the weekend. So if it was the thermister, I would know by Monday. I will let you guys know about the results. Once again, thanks a lot for your help. This forum is a great souce of help and Yes, I do owe you a bear! 
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| Posted: Fri Jun 30th, 2006 11:58 pm |
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15th Post |
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Samurai Appliance Repair Man Fermented Grand Master of Appliantology 
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guyinfun wrote:Yes, I do owe you a bear!  This bear's for you!
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| Posted: Sat Jul 1st, 2006 02:15 am |
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16th Post |
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Jedi Appliance Guy Sublime Master of Appliantology
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I didn't know you can hit filter reset on the freezer door. Thanks for the lesson Jabko.
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