The coveted Golden Buttcrack Award was started by disciples of Saint Applianopoulous, the patron saint of appliance techs. The Award’s name was chosen to honor the destinktive warrior’s stance that St. Applianopoulous would strike as he battled insolent appliances:

The Golden Buttcrack Award is conferred upon those Appliantology Masters who have distinguished themselves by giving exceptional help to the heaving swarms of grasshoppers chirping for Appliantological wisdom in the Samurai Appliance Repair Forums. Less than 10 Grand Masters of Appliantology have earned this coveted distinktion. The Golden Buttcrack Masters are:

• RegUS_Patoff
• appl.tech.29501
• kdog
• NSCU_laundry_tech
• Trying to help
• Pegi
• Denrayr
• Willie (aka, Budget Appliance Repair)

You can bask in the glory of the Golden Buttcrack gallery ratcheer.

Greetings,

After joining your forum under the recommendation of a friend, I was shocked to find that you have to ‘pay’ in order to ask simple questions (I.E: Make a new thread) and to simply get answers that are directed at one’s self in order to repair a rowdy appliance.

-Tom

Hello Tom, and all the grasshoppers out there who are “shocked” that we ask for payment to post in the Samurai Appliance Repair Forums. I would like to ’splain why this is so, since most of you are probably unaware of the ins and outs of running a Mama-san and Papa-san business on the web. (And, in case you are wondering, this is our main, full-time business that keeps us and our 3 kiddos supplied with a humble thatched roof over our heads and sushi on the table.)

The main reason we charge to post a question on the forum might surprise you. It’s not because the forum represents the collective wisdom and time of a couple dozen battle-hardened appliance techs, whose previously written pearls are displayed for all to see, free of charge, since payment is only requested if you would like to have your particular problem personally attended to by one or more of these professionals. (Although seeing it written out like that makes me think that this alone would be a darn good reason to charge a measly 5 bucks!) No – the main reason that we charge a small fee is for the orphans. (Think of the children!) The orphans are the dozens of posts we used to get every week, back when posting was free, by heartless scoundrels who would post their questions at the forum, only to abandon them there. In other words, a tech would take the time to engage the grasshopper, give some initial advice, and ask for clarifying questions (most topics require a series of interchanges between grasshopper and tech to come to a glorious and satisfying conclusion). But, the rogue would never return, and the topic would just lay there – abandoned, forlorn, and unfulfilled. Worse yet, we discovered that many of these miscreants had similarly posted these same questions on other forums throughout the web, scattering them without any thought to their care and feeding.

Why was this a big deal? Because it would clutter the forum with unresolved questions, distract the techs from helping people who were engaged and attentive to their topics, and generally dishearten those of us who were working so hard to leave no topic behind. Now, with this small commitment that we ask of people, the forum is rocking with engaging back-and-forth interactions between grasshopper and expert resulting in a treasure-trove of satisfyingly complete repair stories.

The Samurai and I do feel for our grasshoppers who don’t have it easy these days. While $5 isn’t worth a whole lot anymore, it can still mean a lot to those who are suffering from the effects of our bankster-run economy. Last year the Samurai and I heard your chirps of distress and provided a no-cost way to earn posting privileges at the forum: the Appliantologist Merit Exam. We’ll keep looking for other alternatives to charging for forum posting that would still prevent the sad orphan topics that used to be left on our door step.

Thanks for visiting Fixitnow.com!
~ Mrs. Samurai

This is what we professional appliantologists call an “organic dishwasher.” Very eco-friendly, too– uses no water!

Got you one of them fancy Dacor ERD ranges with an F1 error code? Or maybe some other type of problem? Well, urine luck, budrow, ‘cuz Dacor is one of the enlightened manufacturers who makes all their service information freely available to everyone on the Web! And, special bonus, Dacor products are made ratcheer in Ameedica. Lots of repair goodies for the Dacor ERD36 range are linked in the Scribd doc below:

Yessir, the Samurai likes Dacor. Yeah, Dacor products are high-end and sell for big bucks. But we professional appliantologists like appliances we can fix. And you can’t fix broken appliances if the manufacturer restricts access to their service information to either the big service companies, like Sears and A&E (owned by Sears), or to independent servicers who’ve signed a sucker’s contract with the manufacturer saying that they’ll do their warranty work for slave’s wages; GE and Viking are the worst offenders in this regard. So, if you’re wantin’ high-dollah, high-end appliances for your kitchen, Dacor is the brand to go with.

Le Procédure:

1. Unplug the refrigumerator. This resets the main control board.
2. Warm up the freezer thermistor to 70°F– an infrared temperature gun makes for an easy, quick, and accurate way to tell when the desired temperature is reached.
3. Set the temperature controls to das middle settings.
4. Plug the refrigumerator back in.
5. Use your meter to check for 13 VDC from the red to the white wire and between 8 to 13 VDC from the white to the yellow wire at the evaporator fan motor connector.
6. If you don’t have the correct voltage at either location, then the muthaboard is fried– was probably taken out by the evaporator fan motor getting moisture in it. If all you do at this point is replace the muthaboard, chances are excellent that you’ll be replacing it again real soon because that flakey evaporator fan motor will fry the new one, too. Moral of Story: don’t get cute and think you’re gonna save a buck two-eighty by changing only the muthaboard. Replace both the evaporator fan motor and the muthaboard at the same time. I know it sucks but don’t bitch at me– you’re the one who bought a GE, go whine to them!
7. OTOH, if the voltages at both locations are good, then you can probably get by with changing just the evaporator fan motor.

… and may have water pooled at the bottom and running out the front, too.

This is a classic case of a plugged condensate drain hole in the freezer. “Condensate” is the fancy word that we professional appliantologists call the water that gets melted off the evaporator during the defrost cycle. “Evaporator” is another fancy word we use and refers to the coils in the freezer that get cold and do all the hard work of keeping your beer cold. In these (and most) household refrigerators, you have just one evaporator and it lives in the freezer. So all your cold air is made in the freezer compartment and a portion of it is blown into the beer compartment by the evaporator fan.

Now, that evaporator coil is supposed to run at about -15°F. Well, it don’t take a brain surgeon, like yours so very freaking truly, to figger out that that dang coil gets frosted up more often than the Samurai drinks beer. And if we don’t get rid of that frost, you’ll end up with warm beer. Spew!

If everything’s working right and your refrigerator is doing the defrost cycle like it should, then you’re gonna git lotsa melted condensate that needs to go somewhere or it’ll make a frozen mess inside your freezer. Hence the raison d’etre for this post.

Well, them clever engineers done figgered out a way to deal with this so that you normally never see it. It’s called the condensate drain. Periodically, this drain gets plugged up by what we professionals call “gookus,” which is a fancy word that refers to anything that’s not supposed to be there. This gookus can slow down the flow enough so that the condensate water freezes at the drain opening. Then the trouble begins.

But, never fear for the Samurai is here! As complicated as all this sounds, it’s really an easy fix. First, you remove… oh, nevermind, let the picture tell the story:

(click for larger image)

And these accompanying condensate drain clearing tips from Sublime Master That Guy:

Remove part 20, the rear wall of the freezer compartment. I use a shop vac, a towel, and hot water. Use the towel as a damn, pour the hot water on the drain hole at the bottom of part 14. Vacuum up water. Repeat until the drain tube is free or all the ice is gone. Then use the vac. to clean out the tube. Flush with hot water. be very carefull if you use a wire. You might poke a hole in the drain tube. I usually use a small diameter plastic tube and run it through the drain.

Oh, the places the Samurai doth go to service broken appliances. This place had 50 mph gusts and -15°F temps. Can you believe this was a broken icemaker call? And there was no way to get my service van up there– believe me, I tried! No, I had to trudge four miles up the mountain on the Old Bridal Path through snow and clouds carrying all my tools on my back. Never did find the house, either. I think they gave me a bum address. Here’s a video of me looking for it.

Oy, I’m gettin’ too old for this bidness.

(Video shot on Thursday, January 21, 2010)

Emily wrote:

Hi
Have a kenmore dryer 110.85089400 that will run for a while then flash F11. Please enlighten me, O Samurai!