[StephenB]

Re: Whirlpool American Fridge Freezer broken down – help!

I found this forum when searching for a fix for my fridge/freezer. Having read through this entire thread, I’m really grateful to the people who have spent the time and effort posting information here.
My model is Admiral GC2027. I didn’t realise when I bought it in 2007 it was actually a Whirlpool with a different badge!

Problem I had: Display/lights clicking when you operate the ice dispenser.
I found the offending capacitors – this time in the front board. Value should be 3 X 0.68uF = 2UF. Measured 1.2uF. One capacitor was only 0.1uF!
I paralleled with another 0.47uF cap I had and now it’s working.
There’s not much space in the front board to fit replacements, and I’ll order some to do the permanent fix.

A word of warning – don’t “hot plug” the front board with the mains power on. You can get some sparking, and in my case I got a “CF” error. I found that 2 resistors (220ohm marked 221) near the 3 pin connector had gone open circuit. These are the data connection to the rear board and replacing them fixed it.

My understanding is that when the fridge is turned on, the front board tries to communicate with the back board. If it doesn’t get any response in about two minutes, it flashes CF and beeps. I think the back board then operates in a failsafe mode and sets to -18C / 5C and operates the fridge normally (but the controls don’t work)

I traced out some of the cables to the front board. Your model may be different, so don’t take this as certain, but it may help:

3 pin plug : orange and white wires data communication to the back board. These are low voltage (+5V)
Other wire: switch input from ice dispenser (mains voltage)

5 pin plug:
Brown / Blue Live and neutral mains supply
Brown/Green Supply to the light (mains voltage)
other wire – switch input from the water dispenser? (mains voltage)

Thanks again to everone who has contributed on this forum!

[Author]

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