[jcims]

Hi Folks,

We bought this unit new in the summer of 2008. It has run flawlessly since then. Last weekend, it stopped cooling. Pulled it out of its home and found that a small chunk of foam insulation had fallen from somewhere and jammed the condenser fan. Removed foam, plugged fan back in (the foam disconnected the wires I guess?) and everything seemed OK.

A few hours later, we noticed that it wasn't cooling correctly. Fridge was in the 40's and freezer was in the 20's. Cranked everything down to lowest setting in thermostat, hit turbo cool button and hoped for the best. A couple hours later, the fridge was now in the 50's and freezer in the 30's.

Thinking that it may have frozen up the evaporator coils, I emptied the unit and did the old school defrost...unplugged it. After 4-6 hours there wasn't a drop of water anywhere save for some condensation from a little plastic cooler ice thing that was left in the freezer, so I decided that it wasn't frozen up.

Plugged it back in, cooled right down to set points and ran fine...for a day. Then, same thing. Emptied, unplugged, let sit, no water...plugged back in, ran fine.

I've repeated this process a few times, it will usually run 24-36 hours before warming up again. Had a tech in on Friday, he said it was unusual behavior but he was thinking that the hung condenser fan may have let the compressor cook the inverter board, and his suggestion was to swap out the board. One of his clues was that when he plugged the fridge in, the compressor didn't start up right away.

It seems perfectly plausible to me, but I don't know how they handle things if it doesn't turn out to be the right diagnosis. Any thoughts here? Is this something I could replace myself? Rate for board + labor was $320.

Edit: One note, typically the freezer will be the first thing to go up in temp. It will freqently make it into the 20's before the fridge starts to budge from the set point (32 i believe)
Thanks!

[jcims]

Inverter was definitely bad, replaced both that and control board. Works like new.

[Gene]

We are glad you were able to fix it. Good job!

Thank you for sharing your experience with us.

Gene.