BC20KW (P7812502W) Amana Refrigerator - Instructions

The frig was hot but the freezer was cold. I opened the back of the freezer and found the condenser all frozen over. Upon inspecting the defrost thermostat I found that it was split open, as if water got into it and the froze breaking it open. I used a blow dryer to defrost the condenser. I then spent a long time trying to find the model on-line, even the manufactor said it did not exist. Partselect.com was the only place that said the model did exist. When that part came in I toke the back of the freezer out again. Unplugged the defrost thermostat plugged the new one in clipped it back on the condenser and put the it all back together. Everything is working fine now.

I removed the shelves from the freezer. I unscrewed 6 screws with a 1/4" nut driver and removed the back panel. The coil was solid ice because the defrost cycle wasn't working. I thawed the ice with a hairdryer (5 minutes), unplugged the thermostat and installed the new one (it simply clipped on to the coils), and reassembled the back panel and installed the shelves. Total time, about 14 minutes. Total cost, less than $20.00. I can't even get an appliance repairman to show up at my door for less than $100.00! Thanks to your website, I was able to diagnose my problem, order the correct part and fix it myself! (I bookmarked your site under my favorites). Thanks for this great consumer service. It's easy, inexpensive and quick to do it yourself!

This is a bottom freezer refrigerator. First I unplugged the refrigerator. I then removed the wire shelf and wire tray from the freezer. I then removed the ice maker be removing the three screws that hold it in place. I then disconnected the icemaker electrical connector. I then removed the 7 screws that hold the panel at the back of the freezer revealing the evaporator and heat exchanger. I then unclipped the icemaker wiring harness from the panel. The whole evaporator/heat exchanger was buried in ice. I defrosted it with a hairdryer. This took about half an hour. The bi-metal thermostat is attached to the heat exchanger by a clip. Be sure to wear latex gloves to prevent cutting your fingers on the aluminum fins. I disconnected the electrical connectors and then carefully unclipped the thermostat. I discovered that the new thermostat had spade connectors where as the original had one spade connector and a bullet connector on the brown wire. I reused the original bullet connector by cutting it off the old thermostat and splicing it onto the new thermostat. I reversed the process for reassembly. There is no longer any ice build up and the refrigerator is working normally.

There is already a lot of good advice on this web site and others on how to diagnose and do this repair. I'll add a few additional comments that might be helpful.

I wanted to confirm that my old thermostat was in fact bad. I did this by disconnecting the two connectors and connecting them to each other to bypass the thermostat. This is like having the thermostat always closed. With the back panel still open so I could see the frozen coils I plugged the fridge back in and turned the defrost timer knob with a screwdriver to get to a defrost cycle. I could then see the heater element slowly melting the ice. This is of course not a safe way to operate the fridge. Over time this would get too hot and damage the food or worse. I only did this for a few minutes to see the system operating. I did not melt all the ice at that time. Also, it is of course dangerous to plug the fridge in with the panel open, so a great deal of caution is advised.

When I got my new thermostat I wanted to confirm that it worked before going through the install procedure. To do this I cooled it down and then used an ohm-meter to see that the circuit was closed. The important thing I found out is that ice-water, even 2 parts ice, one part cold water, was not cold enough to do this. Only when I put the thermostat into a cold freezer for a while did it get cold enough to close the circuit. I did this side by side with my old thermostat and saw that it was in face bad -it never closed the circuit.

This part from Part Select was an exact match for this freezer-on-bottom Whirlpool refrigerator. The connectors were identical so I did not have to solder wires together as others have need to do.

Some people get the ice off of the coils with a hair dryer. For me this could take half an hour. What worked better and much faster was spraying warm water on the ice with an old spray bottle. This adds extra water to the mix, but it did not overflow the drain pan. Even if it did, it would be easily mopped up if you can roll the fridge out.

One last thing. I suspect this thermostat broke in the winter, but with the dry air the fridge worked for a long time. Once summer hit and the house got humid, the coils iced up quickly.

Good Luck!

Had to remove screws inside back of freezer panel, took off old thermostat. This one had a different plug on the end that wasn't compatible, so had to cut that off and wire it to the old plug end. Piece of cake. Put back panel back on and back in business. Hardest thing was getting the screws out!

I removed the panel in the back of the freezer and found the evaporator to be a complete block of ice. I defrosted it with a hairdryer. Following advice from the Partselect web site, I measured the resistance through the defrost heater. It was about 30 ohms, so I decided that it was OK. Next, I advanced the defrost timer manually with the compressor on until it turned off. The defrost heater did not operate. I concluded that the problem was the defrost thermostat. After installing it, the freezer worked properly.

First it required defrosting since the cooling area was solid ice. Note that I replaced the defrost timer first and no difference. I pulled the icemaker and racks out, then removed the door by removing the 4 screws with 1/4" nut driver. One of the sliding drawer tracks must be removed in order to get the back panel in/ out easily. The 4 screws were easily removed with my nutdriver. The screws are not all the same so keep track! Next remove the 4 screws that hold in the vent assembly where the cold air shoots out (center). Remove all of the remaining screws in the panel in the rear of the freezer compartment and pull it out. The themostat is on the right side with 2 wires and a clip that holds it on to the coolant pipe. Pull it off of the pipe and locate the connector - 5-6" from the thermostat. Pull connector apart without damaging the wires inside. Install new part the same way the old one came out and reassemble in reverse order.

The repair was done by removing the freezer door. I then remove all maybe 48 screws, lifted the inside panel and removed the the old worn gasket ,replacingit with the new making sure that it was seated properly around the panel. then I replaced all the screws and reinstalled the freezer door. Making sure contact is being made around the entire door, WALA,no more moisture, no more frost inside freezer or frige .AT THIS RATE I MIGHT HAVE THIS OLD FRIGE ANOTHER 27 YEARS.

Did the troubleshooting with online instructions and a multimeter. Bought the new thermostat. Disassembled the freezer compartment using a nut driver to expose the evaporator, etc. The thermostat was easy to locate in the upper right hand corner. The new thermostat had one wire that didn't have the correct connector on it so I stripped the wire back and used a crimp connector and heat shrink to attach the connector from the failed thermostat. After plugging the new thermostat in I ran the refrigerator for 15 minutes to cool the thermostat and then rotated the defrost timer to the defrost position and tested the new thermostat. Reassembled the freezer compartment.

removed 30+ screws and interior freezer door panel in order to remove gasket. installed new gasket in reverse order as per instructions and payed attention to proper alignment of said gasket.

Happen to locate your site by Google. Was impressed and really pleased to find a schematic and directions to find and remove and specs to test the water valve and Defrost thermometer using an electric multimeter. You cannot tell by "looking" at a component if it is still OK.
So I put all the freezer contents into my beach cooler. The repair went as follows.
1. Removed the 6 screws from the back panel and pulled it out of the way.
2. Located the defrost thermostat and pulled it off of the coil.
3. Pulled the two connections off and took it to the bench to test. It showed no readings indicating it was dead.
4. Ordered a new one which came in two days.
5. Had to change the electrical connections using wire nuts.
6. Reversed the process plugged the refrigerator back into the wall. It started and later on I was getting ice cubes.
A great experience. Don't mess with repair guy as they normally are not up to speed on all devices and you are paying for them to learn how to repair your appliance in several trips. Probably using this site. If you can follow instructions, you can do this stuff.
Note. I tested the Water valve using given instructions. More time is used moving things around than the actual repairs. I avoided $150.00 for a new ice maker unit.

Pretty simple really after reading online some other owners' experiences. This is a bottom freezer unit. Remove the ice maker, the tray slides, and the back cover of the freezer box. In my case I had to thaw it out with a hair dryer as the cover was frozen in place. I checked the old 'stat and found it was bad; I temporarily wired the leads together until the new 'stat arrived. It does allow the refrigerator to warm up during a defrost cycle but it beats de-icing it twice.The defrost 'stat is clipped over the refrigerant line in the upper right corner of the box. Resistance was 65k ohms and wouldn't close on low temp (tested by clipping it to an exposed refrigerant line in another upright freezer) but there was no obvious damage. The one lead on the replacement 'stat has the wrong connector so you have to cut off the original lead from the old unit and splice it on the wrong lead on the new one. I used an epoxy sealed heat shrink type butt splice. Reassemble and let it run. One word of warning: be careful tightening any screws as they will strip easily

Pulled the old grill out of its two pressure clamps and inserted the new grill in the emptied retainers

first thing i thought was the condenser was plugged so pulled out and cleaned with shop vacum backwards so it became a blower not a vacum cleaned it good and put together. wife noticed cracking noise inside freezer. took all freezer food and shelfs out. took 1/4 inch hex nut screws out and found complete condenser solid ice. did some research on internet and found parts select stories. i buy passed thermostate and hooked heating coils direct which then thawed condenser. checked timer by turning of and it worked fine until i got part and installed.

The refrig seemed warm so I checked the temp of some liquid with a thermometer. Readings were above 60 degrees and I knew food would spoil soon. I vacuumed the dog fur off the cooling coils underneath the machine to see if that would help. Nope. I realized cold air from the freezer was not reaching the refrig. The fan was working but no cold air was coming out. I figured a blockage either in the air duct from the refrig or in the return duct to the freezer. I didn’t see any blockage in the refrig section. I took everything out of the freezer and removed the back wall. The cooling coils were completely frozen solid with frost. Being a frost free machine, I knew there were heaters that were controlled by a timer that melted this frost away periodically and that this cycle was no longer working. I found a schematic on the web, maybe your site, and educated myself on the heater circuit. The circuit consisted of a timer, thermostat near the coils, and a cal rod heater all wired in series. The timer was easy to get to and being a mechanical device I figured it must be the culprit. I ordered one online. I checked its operation and it worked fine. Realizing time was short, I hot wired the cal rod around the thermostat and rotated the timer to its heat position. The frost melted quickly and I put the freezer back together and ordered a thermostat. I canceled the timer order. When it arrived, I installed the new thermostat and it has worked fine for the past month. A little colder than usual as I don’t yet have the settings back to where they were. I have checked the operation of the old thermostat. It’s supposed to close at 30 degrees and open at 45. I have done a continuity check on it by putting it in the freezer, letting it cool down, take it out, let it warm up and it seems to work fine. So I have doubts if I really solved the problem. Wire connections were tight and not corroded. Maybe the timer was hung up on debris that I freed by cycling it. I don’t think this is the end of the story.