A big fat domo to Faz, an Apprentice Appliantologist in the world-famous, award-winning Samurai Appliance Repair Forum, for posting his refrigerator repair saga in the Kitchen Forum. It was such a compelling and well-written epic that I had to re-post it here:
Thank You for running this great website!
I am an electrical engineer and do all my own maintenance on my cars and motorcycles, but never did any work on appliances before.
Our 4 year old Maytag MSD2756GD side by side refrigerator was starting to act up, not cooling down enough for a few weeks, until I noticed the frost in the back side of the freezer section, after I came across the ice cream that was changed to milk shake in the freezer!
After a few google searches, I came across this site and pretty well realized that the ADC circuit should be the problem. But with a new baby that just arrived 5 weeks ago, and having visitors and such, I couldn’t get the time to go look at the problem myself. I turned off and defrosted the fridge that Sunday afternoon for a few hours, plugged it back in and it started working better, not great though.
On Monday I looked in the local craigslist and found a posting from a so called technician with years of experience and warranty on all work done, etc. . Called him and had him go check the refrigerator while I was at work. He went suggested the air ducts/blades in the back were dirty and needed cleaning. I thought he was talking about the air circulation vents inside the refrigerator. I was happy and asked the wife to pay him the $50 he asked for. Later I found out that he did not check any circuits or anything else (unlike what he told me, that he checked). Later, the temperature didn’t go as low as I wanted it, and stayed in the high 40s in the fridge side. I couldn’t get the guy to call me back again, left a few messages and nothing. The fridge was working constantly without ever shutting off, so after reading more info on this site, I realized the defrost system is not kicking in as it should. I decided I knew enough about it to not spend any more money on the labor … and take a “if you want it done right, do it yourself (while informed)” kind of approach.
I bought a second fridge for the garage during the week (always wanted to have an extra one) and this past saturday transferred all of the food from the faulty fridge (which had warmed up quite a bit by then) to this newer one. I left the faulty fridge to defrost overnight, and Sunday morning went to work on it: checked the continuity and resistance on the thermostat and they were all good (later found a wiring diagram hidden by the ADC board, which said the thermostat had to have 240k ohm resistance for continuity check. I reopened that side and confirmed this.) I then proceeded to remove the ADC board and called around, and found a local appliance parts store that had many in stock for $57. Picked it up an hour later, and the lady at the counter told me that they sell ‘a lot’ of those!
Replaced the board with the new one, cleaned the fridge, and everything is working like a clock now. The refrigerator shuts down and starts up on its own, and temp is in the low 37 or so while setting is in the middle of the range.
I must say, compared to working on my motorcycles and cars (valve adjustments, engine work, etc.), this repair was on the easy and fun side of things for me.
I just had to do a contribution to this site that offered me the info I needed to get the job done myself. Thanks for running a great site. You will see me back here for other appliance related stuff.
