I have a friend who has a Kenmore Elite french door refrigerator no more than five years old. The fridge stopped cooling, and he called a repairman. The repairman told him the compressor was out, and it would cost $1,000 to replace.
I looked at the machine with the owner, and the compressor is running. We took the panel off to look at the evap coils, and there is a ball of ice slightly bigger than a golf ball, next to about 8 inches of frost on the coils, the rest of the coils are bare.
All fans running, compressor running, no apparent defrost issues.
Can a machine that new have a sealed system leak? Is the ball of ice a sign of low coolant?
Will a "bad" compressor still run?