First off, I would like to say thank you to those of you that volunteer your time to help us repair things ourselves and save money! I'm a tool & die maker and I know nothing about electronics and refrigeration........except you really can't "make" something cold. ;) I obviously don't know much about typing in forums either, since I'm typing all this again because I wasn't logged in and lost everything when I hit "post".

Onto the issue: Side by side Kenmore, 10 years old this month.
A few weeks ago I noticed a pool of water on the floor, unit had gotten warm and ice in the bin had melted. Mopped up water, scratched head, gagged at the thought of having to buy a new one, unplugged, plugged back in and success..........for a few days.

I cleaned the coil underneath, removed the cover in the back of the freezer to expose the coil, put in a digital thermometer, and fired it up. Freezer goes to about -8 and everything works great. Got home last night and it was 66 in the freezer and nothing was running. I have slide controls for the temp instead of a dial. I moved the freezer slide to colder and nothing happened, when I moved it to warmer it kicked on and went to work. This morning it was warm again, moving the freezer slide did nothing, but moving the fridge slide worked in the same manner as previously stated. I think I have it narrowed down to three parts, just hoping that y'all will know which one I need from experience.

I went to the basement and brought up the fridge that was in the house when I bought it. It's 6 years old, but had never been used. Just my luck, it stopped getting cold enough after a couple weeks, the freezer runs around 24 degrees, but we'll tackle that one after this.

Also, I have never had thermometers in place where I could monitor the temps of the units. What temp should my freezer go to and how warm should it get when it goes into defrost? Do the temps vary greatly when the freezer is empty?

Once again, thank y'all for what you do!

Beuller?????