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Please be assured before posting this I have looked extensively on this forum and on the web to ensure I’m not just repeating the same questions.
I have had the known issue of the bottom of my fridge freezing and the top of my freezer being too warm for the last month or so. I also could hear a strange churning sound from the top of my freezer that grinded to a halt when I opened the door. Eventually this noise stopped and looking online I established it was coming from where the fan is. So I went ahead and purchased a fan replacement as many have been advised on here, plugged it all in and left it overnight. The next day the issue was not fixed and there was also a weird plastic smell coming from somewhere. I opened it all up again to find that the plastic on the fan had actually started melting.
The part I bought was from eBay and it was labelled as being the correct part only the wires were different…they were brown and blue when the other fan just had brown wires. Is there any significance to this?
Should I have allowed by fridge freezer a full 24 hour defrost before installing the new fan? I had used a hair dryer to do a manual defrost and it did look like I’d got to all the ice before swapping the fan over and turning it back on (over the course of about 3 or 4 hours). Regardless this shouldn’t have resulted in the fan melting even if there still was a bit of ice?
What could possibly still be the problem? Was I unfortunate and just ordered a faulty part of eBay…should I try again with a different one? How specifically should I do it? Defrost the fridge and freezer for 24 hours, put in the fan, turn it back on and wait 24 hours etc. Can I have all my food in there as soon as I put it back on or should I wait?
Any help will be greatly appreciated, I really am at the end of my tether with machine.
Best guess from what you report, the freezer is over freezing for some reason but I’d defrost it totally for at least 24 hours first, restart it and see if the problem returns.
It was not liable to have been the fan motor if the old one was running okay.
K.
Thanks for your reply. Not to be disrespectful but you’ve answered a tiny fraction of everything I asked and seemingly not read everything I wrote properly either.
Hopefully someonee else will chime in with more useful info.
Not really, start at the beginning of a problem, not jump to the end. From what you said, given the fan’s the only moving part in there, it sounds like it’s hitting ice.
Firstly you need to work out:
a. If it’s overfreezing and, if so
b. Why
c. If it’s not ice build up, what is the fan hitting something in there
d. Why.
Before you do that doing much anything else is pretty pointless, don’t you think. As what I think you’ve done is treat the symptom, not address the underlying reason for that, not to be disrespectful.
So start at “a.”, don’t try to jump to X, Y or Z. Until you rule out the basics, there’s little to no point doing much else or you’re just guessing, will be playing parts bingo and quite possibly be no further forward after that as I suspect you’ve just replaced a fan motor for no reason other than an incorrect diagnosis of the problem, not to be disrespectful.
K.
Thanks for your reply didn’t mean to come across as ungrateful. It sounded to me like the fan stopped working not long after I started getting the temperature issues. But could have been ice as you say, I didn’t try a full 24 hour defrost like you suggest so I’m trying that now.
Should I be able to hear the fan because I couldn’t hear any difference when I put in the new one (which subsequently started melting)? I’ve seen people saying they can hear it but all I ever hear is the humming of what I think is the compressor.
The fan you will hear but it will be quiet unless it’s hitting something.
The fan will not “melt” unless it’s jammed then friction will heat it up or, the defrost cycle if jammed at heating which is unlikely and there’s a safety stat to stop it overheating. So, logically, it’s probably overfreezing and you need to prove that and work out why.
K.
No change, still freezing at bottom of fridge and warmer towards top. I’ve measured freezer temperature and it’s around -18 but only at the very bottom. Therefore not overfreezing.
After turning it back on there were two clicks 5 seconds apart approximately every 2 minutes. I understand this is the sound of the compressor turning on and off again. This happened for around half an hour but then the fridge went back to its usual humming.
I already cleaned the coils at the back when I first started having issues. What do you think I should do next?
I think you’ll find you’ve got a refrigerant circuit issue from that description as that sounds like it’s struggling to cool at all, certainly not cold enough to store food in and I suspect the fridge will be too warm as well. The fridge draws cold air from the freezer so, if the freezer doesn’t get down to temp the fridge will not cool correctly either.
Unless it’s somehow stuck on a defrost cycle but I’d think that unlikely.
K.
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