GTS18TBSABB General Electric Refrigerator

I applied some tips learned by reading other reviews. So before I started I grabbed my trusty vise grip pliers and a small screw driver. I locked onto the switch actuator, the part that the refrigerator door pushes in, with the vise grips and pulled on it just hard enough to get the screw driver inserted in the right side to push in the c ... Read more atch clip so the switch could be pulled out further each time the catch clip was depressed to the next detent. Then I used the screw driver on the left site to encourage the switch past the detents on the left and very quickly the switch was out of the mount. The wires from the refrigerator pulled out with the old switch. I unplugged the old switch from the wires and plugged in the new switch and shoved the new switch back into the mount, wiggled it a couple of times to make sure it was secure and the job was done. Once I applied the vise gripes at first, the whole job took less than a minute.

The Fridge and freezer were not very cold except for in the very back of the freezer (where the coils are). So I opened up the back of the freezer by first removing the dome light cover and removing all the visible screws. I then lifted up and pulled out the vent in the center of the back panel and removed the two remaining screws on the ... Read more back panel. At that point I removed the back panel exposing the coils and fan. I saw that the fan was not spinning so I used a screw driver to manually turn the defrost timer found on the top of the inside of the fridge. Once I had turned the defrost timer once complete rotation, and the fan didn't turn on, I was pretty sure that it was the fan. I still wasn't sure that the fan was the only problem, but I couldnt see anything else that wasn't working properly. I decided to take a chance and order the fan motor (not the entire assembly. it is easy to replace the moter only leaving the original fan blades and housing). Once I got the part, I unplugged the old fan motor, put in the new fan motor, and pugged it in and it started spinning right away. I put everything back together the same way I took it apart and it has worked great ever since.

The first component I suspect is the relay mounted near the compressor. I installed the replacement relay and still nothing. I then removed the control board, inspected it for burnt circuit paths or components. I noticed the c.b. relay for the compressor's lead had burned away the solder and there was no longer a viable connection. No ... Read more t sure why this happened but my next step is to a) reestablish a solder connection. If this fails then b) replace the control board.