GSA20IBPDFBB 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 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.

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 catch 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.

I had to remove all of the shelves.....part of the ice maker.....the rear cover over the freezer coils.....There were two wires that came from the back of the freezer that were also incorporated with the fan motor plug from the factory....This caused me to cut all of the wires from the new motor and soider them to the existing plug and shrink wrap the connections. If GE would have supplied two new ends I could have cut only those wires added the ends and inserted them into the new motor plug thus eliminating an extra hour and a soildering iron,,,,In my case not a big deal however not a project for those who have trouble with repairs using these type of tools.

First I took a beer out and opened it then took a sip. Then I went into my garage and searched for my Black and Decker power drill with a phililps head on it. Failure to locate a phillips head bit i took another sip of beer and took out one of those old fashion screw drivers. I went back into the kitchen and much to my dismay the fridge didnt fix itself. After another sip of beer I took the old slide out and took it to the outside garbage. On my way around the house my neighbor started to mock my home fix-it skills and his back yard became the new home for the broken slide. I put the new slide in, reinstalled the drawer, and filled it with beer.

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 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.

Removed rear and front grills,brushed and vacuumed area- probably caused the fan motor to fail- unplugged fan, removed fan,motor,and shroud in 1 piece, carefully slipped fan off motor shaft, unscrewed shroud and motor. assembled in reverse order. Frige is in tight area, .I'll now roll it out and clean often

First ,I placed all the frozen food from the freezer into the lower fridge compartment. Removed the main shelf. Removed the ice cube tray shelf. Removed the center plastic covers using a nut driver. Removed the complete inside back wall of the freezer to get access to the fan. Simply removed about 5 screws, and cut 3 tie straps that held the wiring in place. Unplugged the fan connector and removed fan with its brackets and placed them on the kitchen table. Then used the nut driver to remove 2 screws which hald the fan to its bracket. Simply pulled off the fan blades and pressed them onto the new motor. Mounted new motor onto the bracket. Reinstalled the fan assembly back into freezer. Reconnected the wiring and the fan began to run... BE CAREFUL NOT TO TOUCH THE FAN WITH YOUR FINGERS!
Finally replaced all the covers, panels, and shelf etc. and everything is once again nice and cold.

My problem began with having to replace the auger due to damage (broken blade). Unknown at that time the unit was having a defrost cycle issue. Once auger was repaired, then the motor to auger failed. Once repaired the GE unit then began shutting down without warning. Mother board replaced. All was fine for two weeks then noticed odd performance by ice-maker (chunks of Ice again)and frozen package containers showing signs of dampness and then refreezing. Read through the Parts Select web site to see what other users may have had gone wrong with their GE's and what the parts overview section may reveal for me. Found that the defrost thermo and temp-sensor controlled defrost functions. The parts were cheap, $20.00 for the pair so I replaced them both since they are both located next to one another in the freezer compartment. The repair video furnished on the P/S web was great and very accurate. The entire job only took about an hour. The repair video indicated using wire-nuts and electircal tape Instead, I chose to solder the wires and use shrink-tubing to provide the moisture barrier. PartSelect folks are great not only for their parts pricing but also for the informative videos. The GE works better than ever

1) Unplugged fridge and removed cover over light in freezer.
2)Removed screws holding cover over motor.
3) Removed screws on bracket holding motor in place.
4) Un plugged motor and used razor blade to cut grommet holding wires in place.
5) Plugged in new motor and routed wires through grommet. Then used zip ties to hold grommet together.
5) Re-attached motor bracket and installed new fan.
6) Reinstalled cover over motor.

went to your website and viewed exploded view to find the sensor( there are two I just picked one to replace for now), pried the cover off carfully and pulled out the sensor. I snipped the wire in the middle leaving plenty to work with. I shortened the wire on the new piece, spliced the wires together and with some 3M rubberized, tape wrapped them up, replaced the sensor back into the cover and snapped in place.

put fridge into test mode, failed One sensor. Took it out, Tested it, Ordered part also picked up splice kit from electric store spliced it truned on and good to go