Been dealing with this thing not defrosting for the past couple of years. Finally decided to dig into it while wife was manually defrosting it. Hasn't been a big deal doing it this way, just had a few extra minutes. I took out the defrost thermostat, at room temp it was open. Stuck it in ice water for a bit and it closed. Put the hair dryer on it while attached to ohm meter and it opened back up, so thermostat should be good.
Disconnected the heater and got 63 ohms. So, would this heater be considered good or bad? I haven't manually moved the timer into defrost mode, as I said we've been dealing with this for a couple of years. Didn't want to move this thing if I didn't have too. But, that's probably the next logical step, unless the heater is considered bad reading 63 ohms.
Thanks

Heater should measure about 33 ohms.
I would ( with the freezer cold, turn the defrost timer till it enters defrost, If the heater glows cherry red, you probably have a bad defrost timer.