GE Acting not like it should

[VanTurenhout]

Hi from Holland (this an excuse for my lousy English),

My GE Side by Side refridgerator is not working like it should. Here's what happens:

- On a certain moment the temperature of the freezer went back to about -7 degrees celcius. The cooling part also became warmer, so I had to throw away everything. I took of the back-panel of the freezer and saw the coil was covered with ice. I thawed the freezer and switched it back on. Everything looked fine, the temp went down to -20 degrees celcius for the freezer and about 4/5 degrees for the refridgerating part.
So far so good, but after two/three weeks, exact the same happens.
Note: the compressor was working (too good in my imagination)

Now, I've done the following:
- tested the Defrost Thermostat by taking it of, connected it to a multimeter and measured the 'resistance' (not the right word i guess) when it was in another refridgerator, and there was some, then I took it out the refridgerator en I saw a change in de values measured, until it went to no resistance. As far as I know, the thermostat should be working fine.

- Tested the defrost heaters. When I cut off the thermostat, I was able to connect the wires from the heater to each other. Nothing happened until I manually advanced the timer into defrost mode. A nice red color showed up from the heaters. So these were working fine also.

- Next, I connected everything, and manually advanced the timer into defrost mode. Waited for an hour or so, to see if it switched back to cooling mode, and it didn't.

So, my first gues would be: Defrost timer went to the Bahama's.

But, it should be stuk in either:

- Defrostmode: the fridge's compressor would NOT be running, which is not te situation, as I said, it WAS running (but could be an explanation of the rise in tempartures)

- Cooling mode: the fridge's compressor is running, and a the coils would be full off Ice, This was the fact, but when it's full of ice, how can it be the the temperature was going back to -7 in the freezer, when it should be -20? (same for the refridgerator part)

- Both: But I'm not sure how to analyse that, except for the fact that the heaters were not heating up when I was waiting for the time to swicth back to cooling mode, but then again, the defrost thermostat was preventing that I guess.

You see, I'm not a fridge doctor, more a DIY guy, but maybe some of you experts can help me out with this.

Thanks in advance,

Rob
Oh, the model is an GE KE211/A (don't know if it's the same in the US) and I bought it in 1998.

[woodchuck]

If I understand it correctly, your defrost timer is not running. It is stuck in the cooling cycle and eventually the ice builds up like you noticed. With the ice build up the air can't come in contact with the cold coils so everything warms up.

[VanTurenhout]

Thanks for your answer.

I just took the timer apart, and did not see any strange things. I connected the timer when it was open, and I saw the motor and some wheels turning.
Then, i closed it, and switched to defrost mode. I waited for 45 minutes but nothing happened.

Does anybody know what the defrost time should be for this refridgerator? Can it be more than 45 minutes??

Rob

[richapplyguy]

You have stripped gears in the timer, just replace that and the defrost thermostat.

[VanTurenhout]

Stripped gears....does that mean that some wheels doesn't look like they should anymore, like some teeth of a wheel that are flat now?

Hmm, i was hoping that replacing shouldn't be neccessary, because it's a quite expensive part here. I see it in the US for about 30 dollar, in Holland, they charge 115 euro (around 110 dollar) for a defrost timer.
Maybe it's because we have 220V here)

Latest update: It looked like it worked, but now I saw that the advance-screw has not moved for a whole night. Strange thing is that I can hear the compressor turning on and of some times. Is the compressor also switched by that defrost-timer?

Oh, and why do you think I should replace the thermostat ??