Hi everyone. New to the forum and hope someone can give me some much needed guidance.

So I have a kitchen aid side by side built in refrigerator /freezer. It has been acting up for a few months now. I've been trouble shooting it on and off and have replaced some parts. Here is what it is doing.

It will run fine for a day, sometimes 2 and then the freezer starts to warm up and everything melts. If I advance the defrost timer slightly and turn the refrigerator off for about 5 minutes and back on, it usually starts to work again. I would say this process works about 80% of the time. First thing I did was replaced the overload relay. Next I replaced the defrost timer, finally I replaced the freezer thermostat. I even went ahead and replaced the defrost timer a 2nd time. All with no luck. In the last few months troubleshooting, I noticed that when the refrigerator stops working, the defrost timer stops advancing as well. It is almost never in the defrost mode however. It normally stops advancing after it kicks back on after defrost mode. The compressor runs properly from what I can tell and continues to run until I turn the fridge off.

Any ideas? I spoke to a local appliance repair person who gave me some tips but is baffled. I'm also on some other forums and folks are baffled there too.

I'm under the impression that the defrost timer should continue advancing as long as there is power on the pin correct? I checked for continuity on the different pins upon defrost and regular mode and those seem fine. What would cause the defrost timer to stop moving while the freezer is starting to warm? I never see any frost/ice build up on the back wall of the freezer, but I haven't removed the freezer back wall cover yet.

Any help/direction you can give me is highly appreciated.
Thanks!