[lovemyoldfridge]

Hi All.

Today my fridge woke me up at 6 in the morning bipping with FF message on diagnosting panell. When I opened the door and check, I found out both fridge and freezer are not cooling. All food defrosted. This is my old GE model TFX24FLB. It was working like a horse for about 20 years and I never had any problems with it. Right now once it's broken I can hear something like a fan running from a freezer and sometimes like a clicking noise once. Sound like relay is clicking trying to start compressor. You can hear like a power noise, I can see fan is starting for second and then stops. It repeats in about 2 min. I don't have any experience fixing fridge, but would like to fix my old horse myself. Can anybody help, trying to identify what exactly got broken compressor, capacitor, starting relay or else? Where to get parts, schematic, service manual from? Any help appreciated.

Thank you.

[richappy]

Remove the back panel and pry off the cover on the side of the compressor. Remove the start device, a small black box. Very rare but it might be bad. I would replace it with a relay PTCR WR07X10055 Just ferify it looks the same as your old one. If you have a mechanical start device with a copper coil, it's probably ok and your compressor has developed a short if the lights dim when it tries to start.

[lovemyoldfridge]

Got a new part, replaced. Still have same issue. How to check if this is not a compressor. Last hope for capacitor failure.

[richappy]

Only way to verify bad compressor is to monitor the current with an amprobe.
In your case, it seems like your compressor start winding is bad as it draws excessive current.
You can try a 3n1 hard start device on it, but no guarante it will work.

[lovemyoldfridge]

Thanks for getting back to me. I think I need some more details on that. Could you be more specific and describe step by step what needs to be done and if possible in right order. Thank you.

[richappy]

If the factory replacement start device did not start the compressor, the compressor is bad. You can call in a pro to verify.