Lee posted this in the Samurai Appliance Repair Forums:

Good day!

Periodically, I lose control of the temperature in the fridge. The fridge is 9 years old, model number PLHS267ZA. We purchased a home 3 years ago that included this fridge.

Several months after purchasing the home, the entire fridge side froze overnight, along with its contents (the worst freezing was on the top shelf). This occurred despite the fact that temperate settings hadn’t been changed at all. Upon adjusting both the freezer and temperate dials down a bit, things got back to normal for a while.

Since then, it has frozen over every couple of months without warning. Other times, the temperature hovers over 40 degrees and we have difficulty getting the temperate below that level without things freezing on the overnight.

The settings on both the freezer and fridge thermostat range from 1 – 6 with 3.5 being marked as the factory setting. Our dials have to be set between 5 and 6 to get the temperature down to the high 30’s (barely cold enough)…in doing so, we periodically experience an entire freezing of the fridge side and the cycle repeats itself.

I checked under the fridge (where the fans and coils are) and it was extremely dusty. I did vacuum things out, but no change in temperature. I’m certainly not a handyman, but in reading other posts in this extremely valuable forum, perhaps my problem is the “Control housing & air damper control kit”? Or, maybe the thermostat? Something else?

Any expert opinions out there? Thanks a bunch in advance.

Lee

You’ve done your homework well: these units do indeed have issues with the control housing & air damper control kit, as you were suspecting from your research. Here’s the replacement assembly:

(click it to git it)

And here’s an illuminating and illustrated Scroll of Appliantology™ for this repair kata to make straight your path:

Frigidaire Refrigerator Next Generation Controls – Replacing the Control and Damper Assembly