Hotpoint Mistral – cold freezer warm fridge

We have a Hotpoint Mistral FF72 which we bought in 2000. Clearly it’s done well with no issues until now and it probably has come to the end of it’s days but before we throw it onto the heap of hasty decisions I’d like to just run the symptoms past some of the experts here….

The fridge suddenly started to warm up to 12 deg or so a couple of days back. The light doesn’t stay on when the door is shut, and the door seals well.

The freezer appears to work fine, I’ve allowed the freezer to partly “defrost” (fair bit of ice about around the evaporator coils in the freezer compartment) and switching back on sees the circulating fan fire up for a couple of seconds until the compressor kicks in and then it (the fan in the freezer compartment) stops. The temperature on the LC display shows the freezer temp dropping quickly so I guess the refrigerating bit works ok. I’ll continue to defrost it completely before I start it up again as that seems to be a suggestion kicking about.

The digital display doesn’t show any error messages except if I remove the green or yellow thermistor plugs when I get E1 or E7 so I’m assuming the thermistors aren’t either open or closed circuit.

The compressor cooling fan (at rear next to the compressor) runs fine, the compressor coils are (now) fluff and dust free.

I’ve read a number of forums and hear the info about the thermistors and the recirc fan and the PCB (which is a place too far for me at the moment) but unless I start replacing some of these items (and I’d hate to be taking out perfectly good stuff) are there any other thoughts? I mean should there be ice around the freezer coils? Could this mean the defrost element has given up? Have we got the best out of our F/F and need to scrap it…..?

I’m just reluctant to do so to a faithful servant…..and I’m keen to fix stuff if at all possible (within reason…not ££££s)

rick