TLDR - 7 - step game plan
- Remove the hinge cover by pulling it up.
- Remove the three bolts securing the hinge using a socket or nut driver.
- Lift the hinge off, keeping the spacer intact.
- Disconnect the wiring harness and water line (if applicable), then lift the door off the hinge.
- Soak the new gasket in hot water or set it in the sun to remove creases.
- Peel back and cut the old gasket away from the door liner using wire cutters.
- Remove the old gasket by pulling it straight out from the door.
Parts used
| Part | APP SKU | Order link |
|---|---|---|
| Refrigerator door gasket 2159075 | 2159075 | Whirlpool 2159075 Door Gasket (AP3083603) - AppliancePartsPros.com |
Tools you’ll need
Socket, Nut driver, Wire cutter, Wire snips, Putty knife
Full transcript – click to expand
View Transcript
Hi, this is Matt with AppliancePartsPros.com.
Today we'll be showing you how to repair your appliance.
Remember, any time you work on an appliance, make sure it's unplugged or the circuit breakers
are off so there's no chance of electrocution.
In this video we're going to show you how to change out the Whirlpool refrigerator door
gasket.
It's going to be a very easy repair and should only take a few minutes to show you how to
do it.
If you already have one of these, great.
If not, you can click on the link below or get it at AppliancePartsPros.com.
When you open up the package, you're going to get the instruction sheet and the new door
gasket.
The main reason you'd be changing out the refrigerator gasket, if it's torn or it's
compressed over the years and it's no longer sealing the door.
Before you take this upper hinge off, you want to make sure that you open the door and
make sure you remove any items out of the door bins so when you take the hinge off there's
no weight on the door.
First thing we have to do is remove the cover.
It's just snapped in place.
All you have to do is pull up on it and it'll come off.
Then we have to remove these three bolts.
They're 5-16ths.
You can use a socket or a nut driver to take them out.
Once you have the bolts out, all you have to do is lift the hinge off.
Make sure you don't lose your spacer.
Then we can lift the door off.
If you're doing a freezer door gasket, this hinge cover may be held on with a screw.
If you have the dispenser, it's probably going to have a wiring harness in there that you
have to disconnect.
Then at the bottom, we have to look underneath the kick plate and there's a water line that
runs up to the dispenser that you have to disconnect and pull up through the hinge.
All you have to do is snap it off.
It's held in by a clip on each end.
And the water line is right here.
It runs up through the hinge and the door.
So it has a compression fitting right here that you can just disconnect and pull the
nut off.
Now that you have the hinge off, we're ready to lift the door off.
You can remove any tape you put on it to hold it in place.
All you have to do is pull off on the door and lift it off the hinge.
Now that you have the door off the refrigerator, we can set it on a table and get ready to
change out the gasket.
The first thing you want to do is take your gasket and lay it out in the sun or get it
in some hot water to get all the creases and wrinkles out of it.
Sometimes when they ship them, they come with some creases in the gaskets and you need to
get those straightened out before you put it on.
So before we cut the old gasket off and it can't be reused, we're going to lay the gasket
out above the old one just to make sure we have the right one and there's no problems.
So it looks like it's about the right size.
If you do this and you find out you got the wrong one, you just need to give us a call.
While you have the gasket sitting outside or soaking in some hot water to get the kinks
out, we can start to take the old gasket out.
What you have to do is carefully peel it back.
You want to start in the middle of one of the longer sides of the door and you peel
it back and then you can take your wire cutter and snip the gasket all the way into the door
liner.
With the gasket pulled out, we can take our wire snips and snip the gasket until we get
up close to the door liner.
Once we get up to this point, we can very carefully pull on it to get it to come out
from underneath the door liner.
Then once we have it all the way out, we can cut it the rest of the way.
Now that we have the door gasket cut, we can pull it out.
You want to make sure that you pull straight out this way on it.
Don't pull up, otherwise you'll separate the inner and the outer door liners.
They're not made to come apart.
So you just want to pull straight out, work it all the way around the door.
Once you get the old gasket out, you can take a putty knife and put some tape about three
quarters of an inch up and run it around in between the outer door and the inner door,
making sure that you push it in the whole way.
You want to get rid of any of the loose foam or any chunks of foam that might be caught
in this groove that when you try to put the new gasket on, it's going to bind you up and
not allow you to push it in.
So don't go any deeper than three quarters of an inch though.
Here's the old door gasket next to the new door gasket.
If you already have one of these, great.
If not, you can get it at AppliancePartsPros.com.
The new gasket is a little bit different than the old one.
It has this hard plastic edge that actually goes underneath the lip of the door liner,
whereas the old one was all rubber.
So when you're pushing the hard plastic part underneath the liner, you want to use something
that's not sharp and you can press up against this edge of the gasket right here to get
this underneath the lip.
Don't use anything sharp that's going to tear the new gasket though.
And you want to do the opposite corners first.
So we're going to do this corner, and then the other opposite corner, and then the other
two corners.
So with the gasket laid out, we're going to start at the bottom corner over here.
And again, this black piece is what's going to go up underneath the door liner right here.
So we're going to stick it underneath, try to get it started.
And once we have it in there, then we can use the tool to push it up into place.
If you can get it with just your finger, it may be a little bit looser, but you may have
to press on it with a tool.
So we got that bottom side in.
So we're going to finish up this corner and do this edge a little bit up, and then we're
going to go up and do the opposite corner.
All right, so we're in the upper opposite corner.
We're going to get the black piece underneath the door liner and get it started.
And then we can do a little bit going up this way.
Your gasket seems a little bit short.
Sometimes they stretch a little bit, so you might see them and it looks like it's really
short.
If it looks like it's a half inch short or so, all you have to do is stretch on it and
it'll stretch out a little bit.
All right, now we'll go down and do the other bottom corner and then come back up and do
this one.
Now that we have the corners in, we can use our tool and go around the outer edge of the
door and put the rest of the gasket in.
Now that we have the gasket installed, we can go reinstall the door.
All we have to do is set it down on the lower hinge, close the door, we can put the hinge
back on.
They're 5-16th inch bolts.
All you have to do is tighten them down with a socket or a nut driver.
Once you have the bolts in, we can put the hinge cover back on.
If you're doing a freezer door, you just have to put the nut back on the water line and
re-tighten it.
Then once you get the water line back in, all you have to do is snap the kick plate
back in place.
Now that we're done installing the part, we can close the refrigerator door and the freezer
door.
Now that you've finished repairing your refrigerator, you can plug it back in, make sure it starts
to cool off, and it goes back to its normal temperature.
Thanks for joining us for another successful repair brought to you by Appliance Parts Pro
Check out our other repair videos on our site, Facebook, and YouTube.
Need help finding parts or troubleshooting? Post your question in the Refrigerator Repair Q&A section.