This ice maker has developed a leak between the control head and the mold, not uncommon in these cheesy GE icemakers.

The Fix: Replace the icemaker==> http://www.repairclinic.com/PartDetail/Ice-Maker-Assembly/1399596

To learn more about your ice maker, or to order parts, click here.

Sometimes, you need to manually start the harvest cycle in an ice maker when you’re troubleshooting a problem. Examples would be a mystery leak in the ice bucket or no ice. In the LG ice makers, manually starting the harvest cycle is as simple as pressing a button.

To start the harvest cycle, press and hold the fill key for 3 seconds. The icemaker will run thru:
harvest –> fill –> ice making.

Samurai Appliance Repair Man
http://fixitnow.com

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Heads up on the Electrolux french door bottom freezer refrigerators, example model number EI28BS56IS0, with the ice in the refrigerator compartment and has it’s own evaporator. The problem we’re starting to see in the field is that the unit will run fine for about 30 to 45 days. Then the ice accumulation on the ice maker evaporator starts and this makes a knocking noise in the fridge. See the pic below:

To get rid of the noise, the refrigerator will need to be shut down for a couple days to melt the ice. Then the unit will run fine for another 30 – 45 days and the whole knocking noise, ice formation starts again. And these units are less than a year old! What’s a disgruntled Electrolux customer to do?

As it turns out, Electrolux has a re-work kit for this that they’ll send out free of charge under warranty. This is not a fun job and if you can get a warranty servicer to do this for you, you’ll be much happier.

Jeff wrote:

The dispenser on my Frigidaire refrigerator, model number FRS6LF7JS3, is acting weird:

1 – Yesterday morning the water dispenser on my fridge began to spray water instead of pour it. Ok I will deal with it later.

2 – By 5 pm I return home and my wife indicates the ice maker is possessed. The ice maker would not stop dispensing crushed ice even without pressing the actuator on the exterior. if the door is closed it attempts to dispense crushed ice and the auger does not stop! Its actually not even really dispensing its building up crushed ice in the door hopper. So when you open the freezer door the crushed ice falls to the floor. I proceeded to unplug the ice container from the back of the freezer.

Any insight to the issue and the exact parts I should be replacing? Thank you in advance

The unpredictable auto-dispensing you describe is usually caused by a bad microswitch in the dispenser assembly. They can get wet from drippage or condensation and go wonky the way you’re describing. Let’s do a walk-through.

Here’s the breakdown of the dispenser where I’ve circled the key parts to check:

(click for larger view)

Unplug the refrigerator and remove item 23 to access the screws in the bottom of item 4. Remove item 4 and get some major eyeball action on items 38 and 38C looking for burn spots– usually (but not always) if one of these boards goes bad, there will be a visible burn spot.

Next, check the micro switches, items 38A, with a meter; simple continuity check while actuating each switch. Disconnect the wires from the switch before testing. Help making basic electrical measurements is in this post. If one is found bad, replace both.

You may also find the water tubing, item 1, disconnected from the fill spout which would explain the spraying action and would also contribute to the early demise of the microswitches from getting doused with water. If this is the case, you may need to replace the tubing, which is done from the front. But first, try pushing up a little slack from underneath the freezer door– you may be able to eke out just enough to re-make the connection. Installing the end of the tube into the spout requires some Samurai Finger Fortitude™ but persevere and ye shall overcome.

Here’s the shopping list of links for the parts you may need to complete this mission, depending on what you find:

– Microswitch, Item 38A

– Dispenser Power Board, Item 38

– Dispenser Control Board, Item 38C

– Water Tubing, Item 1

Most icemakers are controlled by a simple wire feeler arm that hangs off the side of the icemaker. As the ice bucket fills up, it raises the feeler arm and eventually stops it from making any more ice so it doesn’t overfill the bucket.

But the engineers at Whirlpool were told that they needed to increase the usable space inside the freezer compartment without increasing the size of the compartment itself. To do this, they figgered they needed to re-design the icemaker, ice container system and freezer shelving. This needed what we professional appliantologists call Divine Intervention®.

So the engineers burned some funny incense and chanted “OM” to the pot-bellied, bald-headed, golden Buddha. And, yea verily, the pot-bellied, bald-headed, golden Buddha did grin down upon them and granted them a miraculous vision of the electronified optical control icemaker system!

In this divinely-revealed icemaker control system, the mechanical feeler arm is replaced with the new optical controls, located on either side of the freezer liner, as shown below.

The optics use infrared light to sense the ice level in the ice bucket. The other change they made was to move the ice bucket from inside the freezer space to the freezer door. These changes increased the available usable space inside the freezer by over 50,000%! And the pot-bellied, bald-headed, golden Buddha did grin and the engineers did feast on fruit bats and breakfast cereals.

The main thing to keep in mind about this optical control system is that the only thing it really does is to shut off the icemaker. Other than that, it doesn’t affect the operation of the icemaker. There’s nothing new or special about the icemaker itself– it works the same way as the good ol’ Whirlpool-built modular icemaker that we’ve all come to know and love. So, for example, you can still manually start the harvest cycle the same way you would for any other Whirlpool-built modular icemaker with the feeler arm.

So that just leaves the optical control itself as something you may need to troubleshoot if you’re having problems with the icemaker not making ice… and that’s ezzacly what this spiffy troubleshooting flow chart will hepya do.

http://fixitnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/TroubleshootingOpticalIcemakerSystem.pdf

Word: This optical control system has been pretty reliable and I’ve not seen many of them fail. Most of the time, when I’m working on a no-ice complaint on one of these guys, I find either a bad icemaker or water inlet valve. But don’t be a parts changing monkey and just throw parts at it hoping to get lucky– do your troubleshooting so that, “…ye shall know the truth, and the Truth shall make you free.”

Can I hear an “Amen?”