GSA20IEMCFWW 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 flap to the ice dispenser would not close, which allowed the ice dispenser to frost up, freezing the water dispenser.

This was a simple fix. The solenoid had stopped working, so it would not automatically close the door flap. I read some posts on this site that suggest that you had to remove the trim around the entire dispenser to get at the solenoid. My fridge may be a newer model, but in any event it was much easier than that. Just below the touch pad for choosing water, ice, or crushed ice (above where the ice/water dispenses) there are three very small holes spaced about an inch a part. After unplugging the fridge, I stuck a small philips-head screw driver in each, freeing spring clips. That allowed the touch pad to come off. I then removed four screws to remove a plastic piece covering the chute, giving me access to the flap and solenoid. I just unplugged the solenoid from the circuit board on the back of the touch pad and then removed three screws to remove the old solenoid. I replaced it with the new solenoid and plugged it into the circuit board. The touch pad then snapped back into place.

The hardest part was figuring out how to get at the solenoid. After I found that pushing the clips in those three holes allowed me to remove the touch pad, it could not be any easier.

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.

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.

To do this repair, I shut off the water supply first. After removing the back panel, I disconnected the first water tank (PS291933) tube from the valve near the back of the refrigerator by pushing the white ringclamp towards the valve which released the tubing (once disconnected I could clearly see the hairline crack in the tube responsible for the water). I then disconnected the other water tank tube from the connector located in the bottom left front of the refrigerator. Then, after removing the bottom shelves and compartments, I unscrewed the two screws securing the water tank to the inside back wall. Then I carefully pulled the water tank and the tubing out from inside the refrigerator. The installation of the new water tank was essentially the reverse of the above, with the exception that I had to use a 2x4 to prop up the refrigerator and my 7-year old daughter's hand to help guide the tube to the front of the fridge. One of the lines did leak initially, but stopped after I removed and reconnected the tube more securely. My only unfinished business with this part of the repair (which I'm not losing sleep over) is I'm not sure where to find the 'insulation wrap' that was around the water tank tubes inside the fridge.

During my investigation of the water tank, I also noticed the tube on the outside back of the fridge going to the icemaker was leaking, so I bought a new grommet & tube (PS292253). Installation was easier than the water tank, but was more of a mystery until the part showed up and I saw that only adhesive tape was used to secure the grommet to the hole in the outside back of the freezer near the icemaker. Again, only had to disconnect the tube from the valve at the bottom of the fridge and pull out the grommet from the top outside. (I did remove the ice cube tray from the inside to avoid contaminating it during the work). Then I connected the new tubing and secured the grommet to the back of the fridge using the adhesive tape. So far no leaks!


I also will likely need to add that WR49X10173 part to hopefully avoid my water dispensor from freezing in the future.

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.

This happened once before. The plastic auger broke. I had a local repair store order the auger and then install it into the bucket. The cost was much more than I paid PartSelect for the entire assembly. What could be easier--pop the old one out and put in the new--for a cheaper price.

I just pulled the old Ice bucket assembly out and replaced it with the new one. Couldn't get any easier.

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