Some Like It Cold
January 2nd, 2009 by ComputerBob
This is yet another one of my do-it-yourself adventures.
Yesterday morning, my wife noticed that all of the ice in our refrigerator’s freezer had melted.
A quick check with a thermometer confirmed that it was 55 degrees Fahrenheit (13 degrees Celsius) in both the freezer and refrigerator.
So I did some preliminary troubleshooting: I moved things around in the freezer to make sure that none of its air vents were blocked. That didn’t help.
I slid the refrigerator out from the wall, removed its bottom back cover, made sure that its cooling fan was running, and vacuumed all of the dust off of its cooling coils. That didn’t help.
Its large, black compressor was silent and cool to the touch. You don’t have to be a refrigerator repair person to know that that’s not a good sign.
Since I know nothing about how to fix a refrigerator, I thought of calling a repair person, but I ruled out that idea pretty quickly. I don’t know any reputable appliance repair places, and I’m sure it would cost a couple of hundred dollars just to get someone out to diagnose what’s wrong with it. And then they’d probably charge me a hugely inflated price to get parts for it and repair it.
So I called my excellent next-door neighbor, Mike. He bought a new freezer several months ago, so I asked him about the best local places to buy a new refrigerator.
Then I went online to find as much information as I could about moderately-priced, reputable, trouble-free refrigerator brands and models.
By mid-afternoon, I felt like I was armed with enough information to visit 2 or 3 stores and make a semi-intelligent purchasing decision. Based on my online research, I knew that a suitable replacement refrigerator was going to cost me about $750 plus tax, delivery and removal of the old refrigerator, for a total of almost $900 (USD).
Then the thought occurred to me, “I wonder if anyone else has had this particular problem with this particular refrigerator.”
So I did a Google search. Only one result came up — a thread at an appliance-repair forum. The author’s refrigerator was the same as mine, and it was suffering from almost exactly the same problem. The forum moderator, a repair technician, responded by telling him how to troubleshoot the problem by checking a couple of parts inside the refrigerator for continuity; then, if necessary, checking the amount of voltage at the compressor itself. The forum moderator also included links to allow the thread’s author to order (from an online parts supplier) whichever one of his refrigerator’s parts turned out to be bad. And the repair tech assured the thread’s author that if the problem turned out to be the compressor, it was covered by a 5-year parts-and-labor warrantee.
The thread’s author responded that he had followed the troubleshooting steps and had determined that his refrigerator’s motherboard was bad, and so he had replaced it with the one that the tech had recommended. And the new motherboard had fixed his refrigerator.
Wait a minute — Did he say motherboard? Refrigerators have motherboards? He did and they do.
So, using my digital multimeter, I followed those same troubleshooting steps. Like the author of the forum thread, I determined that the first couple of parts that I checked were fine. Then I discovered that my refrigerator’s compressor is only receiving 9 volts instead of the 120 volts that it requires. That indicates that my refrigerator’s motherboard is bad, just like that other guy’s.
That’s a good thing, since my refrigerator is more than 6-8 years old, so the warrantee on its expensive compressor expired a long time ago.
I didn’t see my refrigerator’s motherboard in the same area as all of its mechanical parts, so I went looking for it. It was behind a metal cover near the top-back of the unit. It looks very much like a PC circuit board, about 6 inches tall and 9 inches wide, with 5 multiple-wire connectors along its edges and 3 plastic pins holding it in place. It looks to me like it would only take a few minutes to remove it and install a new one.
Those who know me, know that I always research the heck out of anything I want before I open my wallet. Yesterday was no different. I cross-checked the forum’s recommended motherboard’s part number with a complete online schematic of my refrigerator, and confirmed that it is the correct motherboard.
The online appliance parts place was closed for New Years Day yesterday, but in a few hours, I hope to call them and order a new motherboard. Its retail price is $154 but they sell it for about $104 (USD). With tax and overnight Fedex shipping, it’s going to cost me about $135, and it should arrive some time this coming Monday.
In the meantime, Mike brought over his Coleman portable refrigerated cooler so we can keep a few necessities cold.
If that new motherboard doesn’t fix the problem, I’m going to be very disappointed to have wasted all of that money — especially since I’ll still have to spend a whole lot more money to buy a new refrigerator.
But if I’m right, then I will have fixed our refrigerator for a fraction of the cost of having it professionally repaired or buying a new one.
Mister Destructo lives!
Stay tuned for more.
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