I just bought this refrigerator from a second-hand store, and I think I know what's wrong...but want to make sure before I put more money into it.

I plugged it in and adjusted the cooling settings both to max. The refrigerator portion has cooled some, but not much. The floor of the freezer and the back wall are extremely cold - ice forming. Over night, things kept on the floor of the freezer completely froze, but the fridge section is still not very cold.

I am not hearing any fan running and there is no noticeable air movement at the vent into the fridge section (warm or cold). It seems that the evaporator fan is not turning at all.

Some questions to help me diagnose:

How can I test that the fan is the problem...can I check for current at the fan terminals?

Should the fan run constantly? Is there anything that should be "telling" the fan to turn on, but is not? (Or, conversely - is there anything that could be "telling" the fan to be off when it should be on?)

Can defrost have anything to do with this problem? I don't understand the defrost process, but it seems un-related to me, since my problem started from my initial plug-in with a warm, dry appliance. If it is a defrost issue can I defeat the defrost mechanism so my fan spins until I can fix the defrost?

The missing digits are BB...I thought that they referred to a non-essential variation like "color."

Thanks Denman...this helps.

I haven't diagnosed anything yet - and may not immediately - so any additional information is greatly appreciated. This fridge is in really nice shape, and the price was pretty good, so I feel like it's worth a repair. I just don't want to start down a long line of repairs.