ESS25XGMCBB General Electric Refrigerator - Instructions

My husband did the repair, and even though our refrigerator is roughly 20+ years old, he was able to adapt it to work in all the right spots and we now have ice cubes! I'm very happy we did not have to spend $2000 on a comparable refrigerator.

First my wife and i took the panel off the back, unscrewed the old mainboard, unplugged all the switches from it and prayed that the new one would work. We were without a fridge for 2 weeks beginning 2 days before Christmas!!!!! Gingerly, we put the new board in place, screwed it into the fridge, connected the switches, attached the ground wire, and held our breath as we plugged it back in. Within seconds, the familiar sound of water filling the icemaker was hear and there were cheers all around!!!

Checked the internet for reports of similar problems and concluded that it was probably the main control board. Not being particularly handy, I would never have attempted to change the board myself if I had not read the comments and instructions from people on this site. Thanks.

The job was as straight forward as others have described. The only time I had a problem was pushing in the white tab to be able to pull the old board out. That was a bit of a fiddle.

The only thing I found different was the grounding wire. On the original board, this wire was at the bottom of the board and hooked into a wire that ran into the refrigerator. On the new board, the wire was at the top of the board and had a metal loop on it. If I understand it correctly, with the new grounding system the wire is pushed into the space above the board. Then when the back plate is reattached the metal loop makes contact with it , thus grounding the refrigerator.
I chose to run the grounding wire through the original wire into the refrigerator. That meant cutting off the metal loop, slicing in an extra piece of wire to connect the grounding wire on the board to the grounding wire into the refrigerator.

I also now use a surge suppressor for the refrigerator. The “Moaning Myrtle” syndrome started after Hurricane Ike. I suspect the surge when the power was restored damaged the control board. And as so many people seem to have this “Moaning Myrtle” problem, I suspect the control board has little or no surge protection.

I had taken the noise long enough and wanted to get this repaired. I didn't want to pay a repair man hundreds of dollars to do it so i decided to do it myself. I went on to YouTube and found a few videos that showed me how easy it was to do (very helpful).

I wasn't so sure all that noise would come from the Evaporator Fan motor so i ordered it and took the chance. For the small cost, it was worth the try.

All went well accessing the unit and removing the old part. Very fast indeed. However, the snag came when i went to plug in the new part electrical to the existing electrical adapters. The old part had 4 lead connections. The new part had 6. and the wires on the new part were different colors than the existing. I had to use some logic and courage to cut the wires on the new part and rewire the old adapter to this piece. Luckily, i wired everything correctly.

Calling Part Select got me a phone number for the parts manufacturer to help with the splicing but i opted to do it on my own.

The result is i have a noiseless refrigerator again. What should have taken 10 to 15 minutes took half an hour because of the wiring but overall, very easy.

My refrigerator's initial problem was as follows:

1. Freezer fan stopped circulating the cooled air. Causing food to thaw at the top of the freezer, and freeze solid at the bottom. Ice in the icemaker thawed.

2. Water dripped from the freezer door gasket when the freezer was in defrost mode & water dispenser would not dispense water.

--FIX (the easy one first..):
2. I removed the inner freezer door panel and found ice filling every void of the freezer door panel-approx 5 lbs of ice dammed in the panel. I thawed the insulation and removed the ice. Also there is a styrofoam insulating surround around the inside of the dispenser panel. The styrofoam had become saturated with water and was freezing, allowing the drinking water tube to freeze, not allowing the refrigerator to dispense water...
THE CAUSE:
2. Overflowing of water from the in-door ice/water dispenser compartment reservoir (just under the grill where your glass sits, when it's dispensing water) was draining into the freezer door panel.
PREVENTION:
2. Check the reservoir more frequently to make sure water does not build up and overflow into the door.

FIX (now the trickier one..)
1. I initially thought it was the main circuit board. I replaced the board. Access is by removing the 3 hex nut screws holding door in place at the rear of the freezer. Disconnect connectors & using a needle nose pliers, squeezed the plastic catches that hold the board in place. Connect the new board (being careful not to touch the components or traces on the board) to the connectors, then snap into place using the white plastic catches.
Close everything up.

NOTE: This may, may not have contributed to the problem, but my refrigerator light went out. I replaced it with a small flouresent bulb. That bulb did not last, and became inop. Shortly afterward, the freezer started malfunctioning. I replaced the board, and the freezer was still somewhat intermittent. I replaced the bulb with an appliance 60 watt. The freezer has been perfect since...

Note: I first ordered the main circuit board, when that didn't immediately fix the problem, I ordered the above parts. I did not need the parts and am returning them. The web page is forcing me to select at least one of the parts needed for the repair, when I used neither.

The existing light switch was very hard to remove. I ended up having to grab it with a pair of pliers and pull it out. Once it was out, it was very easy to put in the replacement and it seems to be working fine.

used a phillips screw driver to remove two screws that held
the crusher assembly on the end of the ice bucket. Then I used the flat blade screw driver to pry the slot locks open and removed the dispenser cover. reassembly was areverse process.

Unplugged the appliance for safety. Removed two 1/4" screws that held the assembly in place. Carefully removed the wire guard that retains the glass shield. Unscrewed old light bulb and replaced with new part. Reversed the steps after cleaning glass cover.

First I replaced the double valve because the ice maker was not filling with water. It still did not work. Then I replaced the ice maker itself. This worked and was relatively easy to replace. I had to use the water fill "slide" from the old ice maker. The new one was too narrow and it leaked water into the freezer.

Removed water filter and turned off water supply. Remove the metal plate at the rear bottom of refrigerator and the metal plate at the top rear of the refrigerator that covers the exit of the filter housing from the refrigerator. Then disconnected the water supply line and water line from the filter housing mount to the valves that control water to the door and ice maker. From inside the refrigerator, removed the two bolts holding the filter housing and then removed the filter housing and tubing. Reversed the procedure to install the new top filter housing mount with tubing.

Part arrived very fast as ordered..need to pry old switch out from top..use care to push the retainer down..after old switch was 1/2 out, I used a putty knife for better leveridge.Remove wire connector...after plugging in the wire connector to the replacement switch, make sure the switch is properly positioned so the switch will depress when door shuts.

Shipping service was great> Ordered on a Friday, received it on Tuesday. Slipped out the old one and put the new one in and it works great

I had Sears comre and check it out. They wanted $188. for the part and wanted $211 to put it in. They had the part in the truck. The fridg is a GE Profile and only 2 years old. Told them to forget it. Took me literally less than 10 minutes. They did a diagnostics, cost me $77. they told me the problem. I ordered the part here. It came in 3 days and the directions included were awesome. straight forward. Nice to know there is a place to go to avoid getting the shaft from appliance giants. Thank You !

The details: removed the 3 screws, took a picture of the board, didn't need it, unplugged the 6 plugs. pushed 3 clipds holding the board, unscrewed the ground, removed the board, lined up the 3 clips and snapped the new board in place, replugged the plugs and screwed in the ground. Plug the fridg in, done. Literally that easy.

The motor shaft stripped and the drive auger spun in place instead of driving the auger to rotate. I had to purchase an entire motor even though the motor itself worked fine. The shaft being stripped had to be hacked off to get the motor out of the assembly. New motor installed, new drive auger installed. Works fine.

Dispencer quit working a year ago, but still still dispenced water. I talked to a service technician about it. He told me the electric motor was froze up, so I orderd a new one. When it arrived I installed it in about 20 minnutes,tried the dispencer and still would not work but this time the water would not dispence eather and this time I noticed the fan quit running and the light went dim when I tried to dispence ice. So I read the customers diagnosis and repares every thing pointed to the main control board, orderd the part and water filter. When they arrived in three days I watched installing this part video and it took me 20 minnutes to install and every thing works fine.