GBE21ASKAKSS General Electric Refrigerator

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 con ... Read more denser 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

I visually inspected the compressor and narrowed down the source of the noise to the freezer area. Then I removed the doors and the screws securing the divider panel. Next I removed the bottom panel of the freezer, the styrofoam insullation panel and the evaporator motor. The motor is mounted between two grommets. I replaced the gromme ... Read more t facing the fan blades. The aluminum reflector below the styrofoam insulation panel had also come loose. I reattached it and reassembled the refrigerator in reverse order. The noise is gone!