[David--GibsonRT14F3]

Dear Appliance Repair People: My refrig often freezes veggies (28 deg F), often is too warm (48 deg F). Freezer varies from OK (0 deg F) to a bit warm (very soft ice cream). Often refrig is OK, but freezer too warm even with it set to max cold (#5). Often have water in bottom of refrig--probably from freezer. I suspected the cooling thermostat & VERY carefully cleaned part of it & that helped the irratic behavior; but now it's out of adjustment. How do I set the "cut in" and "cut out" screw adjustments?. Or, if I simply replace this part, will that fix it, or is it some other temperature controller part? Thanks for your interest. --David

[David--GibsonRT14F3]

Not sure why I received no response to my earlier post. The latest is that the refrig now seems to cool OK in the Frig section (36-40 deg), although Freezer is always a bit warm (very soft ice cream). Periodically (maybe once or twice a day) everything thaws out way too much, and then it starts cooling again. Is this perhaps a problem with the defrost timer or another part of the defrost system?

[abadfish66]

You could have a defective defrost termination thermostat, and it is allowing the defrost cycle to stay on too long, a timer that gets stuck in defrost too long can cause this also. As far as adjusting the cut in cut out, I never touch that and can't help you on that, but I'm sure someone else on here can.

[David--GibsonRT14F3]

Thanks very much, abadfish66, for the reply and help. I cleaned the freezer drain line and the evaporator pan. Now both freezer and refrig temperatures seem normal except for the end of the defrost cycle. Timer seems to run OK; the problem does appear to be a defective defrost termination thermostat. So my next step is to try to find, remove, and replace it. --David

[David--GibsonRT14F3]

I found specs on a replacement timer (8 hr cycle with 30 minute defrost time, so mine is close to normal) and a defrost heater (cutout at 55 degrees F and cut in at ~30 degrees, so it's acting about normal, too).
After reading your responses and some additional thought, I hypothesized that the refrigerator was originally designed to have a (long missing) filter between the freezer (fan channel on the back wall) and the refrigerator (where the channel exits down into the refrigerator).

So I added one made of a thin sheet of filter material. The temperatures in the freezer and refrigerator now appear to be correct and much more stable most of the time (0 deg F plus-or-minus about 5 deg F and 38 deg F plus-or-minus about 2 deg F, respectively). So it's all fixed!

Thanks for your help in figuring this out!
David--GibsonRT14F3