PCF23PGWAWW General Electric Refrigerator - Instructions

After replacing the defrost heater, main board and thermistor I still had the same problem. Called a repair guy and he (with the help of GE on the phone) diagnosed that the temperature sensor was bad. So I ordered from partselect and installed it and it fixed the problem. Been good for a couple months (knocking on wood). To install I had to cut the 2 wires to the old sensor, crimp the 2 new wires on and snap the new sensor to the clip on the evaporator. Very easy. Make sure you seal the ends of the wire crimps so moisture doesn't get in and corrode the connection.

The freezer in my side-by-side kept warming up -- often 20 degrees or more, which of course caused the fresh food side to warm up also. I do a lot of jump-in-with-both-feet home repairs, but never on a large appliance. Not having an ohmmeter, which cost about $100 for a reliable one, I took the symptoms to the internet. Countless self-help sites and U-Tube videos later, I was positive it was one of two possible problems, either the defrost thermostat was broken and the defroster wasn't coming out of its cycle or the temperature sensor wasn't reading the correct temp and thus kicking in the fan motor when needed. Fortunately I found both parts easily on PartSelect.com and the total cost for both, including shipping, was $30, less than 1/3 of the cost of an ohmmeter. Not knowing for sure which part it was that was bad, I ordered both, figuring, since I had to pull out the panel anyway, I might just as well replace them both ... the price was right. (In retrospect I should have order 4 Temperature Sensors as my fridge has two in both the freezer side and the Fresh Food side. Any one of them being bad could have caused the same problem. Fortunately, I was lucky because it was either ONLY the Defrost Thermostat or I just happened to pick the right Sensor, but the repair worked.)

The repair was easy: Unplug the power. A Nut Driver removed the four screws holding on the panel in the back of the freezer. A screw driver removes the one screw holding the lamp cover in place. Remove the light bulbs, pull off the panel and right above the freezer coils you'll see both parts -- plain as day. (If your coils are clogged with ice, you will probably need de-ice first.) Cut the wires to both parts as close to the parts as you can to leave as much wire exposed as possible. Strip the ends of all four wires about 1/2 inch and also on the new parts. Match up the wires in the fridge to the wires on the parts and twist the ends together (Note: both wires on the Sensor are white so they match up either way, but the two wire on the thermostat will need to match up orange to orange and pink to pink.) I used silicone filled wire nuts, which you can buy at any hardware store or use your own wing nuts and fill them with silicone or shoe goo which works just as well ... anything to keep the moisture out and prevent the wires ends from corroding. Tuck the wires up and replace the panel, light bulbs and light cover That's it. Very easy. By far the hardest part was wedging my wide body into the narrow freezer compartment. Some one-handed work added a little extra time to the project.

In my case the freezer fan didn't kick in for about twenty minutes after I plugged it back in, but I assume that it either begins in the defrost mode or it takes that long for it to reset itself ... either way the repair worked great.

I went to a GE repair center to explain my problem, the service center reccomended that I have a techinician come out o look at it. $75.00 for the visit and what ever labor and materials wuld cost.

I went on line to see if there were others having this same problem and found that there were many with the same problem.

After reading some of the ways that people found out what was wrong ...it became a matter of three components, the timer, heater or thermostat.

I tried the most common component and the less expensive one first , the thermostat switch I installed it very easily snipping two wires and attaching the news using wire nuts I used the diagram on this website to pinpoint the component and there has not been a problem since.

I read in a previous post how to do the job from outside fridge which saved me lots of time. No need to remove inner door lining. Here is my procedure:
1.Turned off power. 2.Snapped off outside trim ring. 3.Located three small holes inside lip just above ice tube. The center hole was not used. 4.Pushed rather firmly up through two remaining holes with small Allen wrench to release front control panel. 5.Removed (3) wire connectors from printed circuit board. Firmly pull/pry them straight out as lifting on retaining clip will break it off. I broke one & had to elect. tape it back in place later although I doubt it would have ever come off. 6.Release secondary panel by removing (4) screws. The problem was obvious as the solenoid had broken the crank arm off the flapper rod & trapped it open 7.Replaced solenoid, crank arm with flapper attached, spring & micro switch. Switch was okay but I changed anyway. 8.Cleaned all areas with 1/10 bleach water to sanitize. 9.Re-installed evrything in reverse order & all is okay. Thanks to someone for telling about those two small holes. Made job easy versus a very hard one.

I removed the old temperature sensor by cutting the wires. I attached the wires of the new sensor with wire nuts and mounted it in the same bracket.

First I removed the shelving from the refrigerator side I then removed the cover to the refrigerator condenser which consisted of a plastic cover and a styrofoam inner chamber cover. The Condenser is held in place with two stainless phillips head screws. I removed the screws and gently pulled the condenser forward so that the Drain pan could be easily removed. The drain pan is made out of thin sheet metal with a galvanized coating that will not hold up it will start rusting in a short time. I inspected the drain pan cleaned it up with a little Muretic acid and it had too many rust holes so I couldn't repair it. I ordered a new Drain pan on Part Select and when it came in I washed it and dried it completely then I sprayed it with Cold Galvanizing compound with zinc particles. You can get this from Home Depot on the spray paint isle. Hopefully the spray Galvanizing will keep it from rusting in the future and leaking inside the refrigerator. The Trough Drain Pan should have been made of Stainless sheet metal or plastic I don't really know why they used the galvanized coated pan. Everything went back together in reverse with no problems. Hopefully this drain pan will last longer than the first drain pan because it was only 4 years old. I remember when the older refrigerators would run for decades.

First unplug then remove all food and the ice cubes from the freezer only..Then removed the traysand then the 2 panel screws. Defrosted the coils with a hair dryer,removed the 2 screws holding the heater and then unplugged the wires from each side.Installed the new heater and now has been fine for 12 days now..The sensor- I just spliced it in the exact way the old sensor was wired.All seems fine so far. Was alot cheaper to buy the parts and install myself than to pay for 1 service call..

one repair man said I needed freon. sears repair man said my evaporators leaked. and should buy a new fridge. I installed the parts for less than $30.
dried the freezer compartment removed back panel and asst parts. removed screws from evaporator assy and replaced def therm. soldered leads/wing nuts. removed cover from sensor temp and again connected leads. working fine.

This was the second time in two years I had to replace a broken drive cup. Remove four screws that fasten the ice bin to the frame. Remove one screw that fastens the cube-crushed ice lever to the bin. Do not remove the lever and spring from the bin. Move the lever to expose the connection to the cube-ice shield. Push the lever to compress the spring and remove the lever end from the cube-ice shield. The cube-crushed ice assembly is a press fit and should pry away from the bin. Two issues. 1- The threaded plastic bearing on the dispenser end had turned all the way in causing the end of the dispenser screw shaft to bore through the housing and trap the shaft onto the housing. I had to insert a pry between the housing and the dispenser mechanism to release the shaft from the hole it had bored. Then the dispenser mechanism separated easily and the drive cup replacement was simple. 2- Why was the drive cup breaking? When I used "quick ice" the freezing tray over-filled causing the cubes to freeze together at the top. The bonded cubes then got trapped in the dispenser screw and jammed a lump of ice into the end of the bin causing enough pressure on the plastic drive cup to break it. Lesson - Check the ice bin frequently for frozen lumps of ice. If present, empty the bin and make sure only properly formed cubes are present. Run the dispenser frequently to prevent ice cubes from freezing together.

This story starts with a GE side-by-side refrigerator that has always had wide temperature swings and a temperamental water dispenser. The ice maker was not making ice, and the built in digital thermometer showed it was running warm. I suspected that the heat exchanger was full of dust and so looked there. What I found was that the condenser tank was hot to the touch and the fan wasn’t running. As an experiment, I aimed a fan at the it for a while I saw that the freezer temperature dropped back to normal.
.The fan is marked as 11.2 DC so I checked for voltage at the fan and found some. With three wires and no wiring diagram I wasn’t sure this answered all the questions, but hooking the fan to a 12 volt power supply didn’t get it to spin.
I priced parts at a couple websites before using partselect.com . They also have a good diagram to look at (Sears diagrams are really poor). I ordered the part with 2-day shipping; it arrived on time, was correct and fixed the problem.

I first shut off water flow to the fridge. Examination of the package (which was not exact in appearance to the original) demonstrated that the electrical connectors were well-insulated so I arrogantly and successfully proceded without disconnecting the power. My fridge is old enough that the model doesn't appear exactly on anyone's list so I wasn't alarmed that it took an extra 10 minutes or so to noodle out how to adapt the slightly different inlet cowling and electrical cord with extension, but the device is pretty simple.
Soon I loosened the two mounting screws with a nut driver, used a screwdriver to pry away the plastic snap-in housing over the electrical socket on the fridge inner wall and pulled away the electrical plug. The original water fill tube remained in its cavity, ready for re-use.
The new unit's mounting points matched the original screw locations perfectly, as did the fill cowling - which on the replacement icemaker has two possible attachment points. The new unit's electrical connector required an extension pigtail to adapt to my socket, but it was included in the package. The extra cable posed a minor cosmetic issue because it hangs in the collection basket a bit, but that will soon be remedied with a tie wrap.
After the water was restored and an anxious wait of a few hours, we had well-formed ice cubes that weren't all stuck together and the stalactites haven't reappeared.

I unplugged the electrical connection. Then I removed the 2 screws holding the icemaker in place. I lifted out the old icemaker unit and put the new one in place. Then put the 2 screws back in and plugged in the new unit.

The icemaker started making ice very soon after turning the unit on.

Emptied the fridge and freezer. Unplugged it and in so do doing defrosted the freezer coils. Replace the listed parts, for they were right there easy to get at and replace. Between the three of them we had an 80% chance of getting what was wrong. The freezer and the refridgerator are both working just fine. No more warm milk.

used a screwdriver to remove screw and unplugged part. Plugged in new one and secured with a screw.
Simple

For several years, had problem with water accumulating in the bottom of the refrigerator...took out the "custom cool" drawer and assigned my kids the responsibility to dry it out daily after supper (about a fourth of cup of water daily)...the water was condensing and dripping down the left side of the refrigerator... NOT coming from the refregerator evaporator drip pan area. Then the refrigerator and freeezer had erratic cooling...paid 4 grand for this GE stainless steel on the front/sides frig about 5 years ago... then my wife said she wanted a new refrigerator...what the heck...went on to numerous websites and finally decided to do my own "overall"...had nothing to lose except the price of the parts. A helpful web site is the GE technician site at...www.manualinstruction.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/ge-sidebyside.pdf. I ordered the four thermisters, a new freezer defroster (the old one was probably OK...the freezer coils were not "iced Up"), and a new defroster thermonmeter. While I was at it, I ordered a new refrigerator evaporator drip pan that was rusting a bit. As per other instructions in this website, just spliced in the new thermisters,used wire twist caps and eletrical tape to seal them. The GE site is a bit more elaborate on the "correct" way to do this. The refrigerator evaporator coil is a bit tricky...see the above ge site...but I just cut the rubber thermister holder down the middle and then tracked the thermister through the holder and stuck it in the block and taped the holder back together...(removed the block first ) and then zip-lined the block back to the coil like it was originally. It was about 3 hours to do everything...and guess what...temp in the freezer is -5...temp in the frig is 36...and NO MORE WATER IN THE BOTTOM OF THE REFRIGERATOR, NO MORE WATER DRIPPING DOWN THE LEFT SIDE OF THE REFRIGERATOR...what will my kids do...I feel like the refrigerator guru now. Wish I had done this several years ago. The parts I ordered came in 3 days. I'm lovin my refrigerator now and my wife is lovin me. It's really easier than I thought it would be...the GE tech website has some "diagnostic" info to isolate different problems... but I just decided to replace "everything" since the parts were not that expensive and it was going to be a "do or die" on getting a new refrigerator.