CST25GRBEWW Hotpoint Refrigerator - Instructions

First I removed the electrical plug from the back of the freezer that plugs into the icemaker. I then removed the two hex head screws that hold the icemaker to the wall of the freezer and removed the icemaker. I removed the plastic cover, which incidentally protects the gears, by prying it off with a srewdriver. I removed three small nuts(7mm) which holds the internal cam in place. I removed the cam by pulling it off the shaft. Once I got the part from you folks I reversed the procedure that I just mentioned, and put the icemaker back together. It works great. The part with shipping was around $16.00. A new icemaker was roughly $159.00. If I would have called a technician it would have cost around $300.00 to repair.

I had made a dry run at the repair after watching the instructional film provided by part select and it seemed easy enough.
The only problem was that i needed to use the electrical cord extender (provided) to adapt to my plug type. That presented a problm because it needed to be tucked up out of the way to allow the ice bin to clear. Just needed to be creative in how you wrapped the cord behind the ice maker unit before snugging the attachment screws.
Cranking out ice like crazy.

Unplugged refrigerator and turned off water valve at wall. Removed the entire back, lower cardboard panel (turns out I didn't have to do this...could have just removed the screws from the right side and folded the cardboard along a perforated line designed for that purpose). Removed screw holding water control valve to back of refrigerator. Took new control valve, and slipped on adaptors for electrical connectors (in bag) to the two smaller of the four electrical prongs). Removed electrical sockets from old connector and placed them over appropriate prongs on new connector. Unscrewed the two old water out lines, cut the old fittings off and slipped the lines snugly into the new outlet valve (new valve had slip on connectors not requiring lines to be screwed in). Keep straight which line goes to which outlet port! Then removed water line going into old fitting and screwed it on to new valve inlet fitting (after removing black plastic protective cap). Turned wall water valve on, checked for leaks (none), and plugged refrigerator back in. Water restored to both icemaker and water dispenser!

By the way, the first valve came damaged, but one phone call and the people at Part Select promptly sent out a replacement which I had the very next day (and this was two days before Christmas!). Great job!

The only difficult part was not knowing which parts had to be removed to gain access to the flapper to replace it. It appeared as if the frame around the control panel would have to be removed as well as the door handle; we tried but were not able to remove the frame. It turned out that the panel just popped out with the frame in place. Once we had access to the flapper, it was easy to replace it. The repair fixed the problem.

Let me start by saying, I usually hire something like this out but figured I would give it a try. The install was fairly straight forward, however it would’ve been nice if the instructions would have been more useful. Instructing me to remove one screw to release the auger and solenoid enclosure wouldve been nice. There were 3 other screws that I didn’t need to remove and they were the ones holding the auger in place, which made assembling that much more difficult. Once to enclosure was removed, and the solenoid was exposed, it was a seemless process. I would however, recommend paying attention to or taking a picture of the connections on the solenoid. I was lucky to remember or got lucky. Regardless, I was able to complete the project successfully. If I had to do it again, I believe it can be done in 30 minutes or less.

This should have been an extremely easy, quick job, but because I'm not that familiar with refrigerator parts, and NO INSTRUCTIONS came with the part, it took quite a while. The fittings for the water lines to icemaker and water outlet were dramatically different from the old part. The old part had screw-on fittings. The new one did not. I went first to Ace hardware-they had never seen fitting like this, and didn't know what to tell me. I drove 20 minutes to Home Depot, and the guy there told me that, rather then screwing on, or needing another part, the fittings were a quick connect, where you just shove the plastic tubing into the fitting. Finally an answer!

I went home, did as he'd said, hooked it up (shoved the tubing in, used the provided electrical adapters for the contacts, and screwed the thing on. It takes a good while for the icemaker to get cold enough to start it's cycle (which I found out from an internet search), and about 6 hours later, I started getting ice. It works fine now, love the in the door water/ice on my "new" 10-12 year old $75 plus $35 for the part-huge 26.6 side by side refrigerator, but the part should have had at least an indication that the water fittings just needed to have the tubing shoved into them.

It seems my refrigerator was old enough [1987] that the spacing on the holes for the bracket were different than the part that is currently sold. The holes on the new bracket were 30 mm apart on center, but on the old bracket they were 20 mm apart on center.

Clamped the old and new brackets together in a vise to use the old bracket for spacing and drilled a new hole through the 4mm of steel.

After which it was a snap installing the new hinge assembly.

Had to defrost the freezer to melt off all the ice before servicing. Once that was done the icemaker replacement only took about 15-30 minutes to complete. The new icemaker came with many accessories and adaptors that were not needed and the instructions were based on replacing an older model and not really clear for my model. They mentioned not being able to use the new stripper but it was exactly the same as the old one so I left the new one in place. All in all it was easy and did the job.

Opened, discovered not flapper but more complicated

Received the first water valve with very poor included instructions. Watched the suggested instructional YouTube for my part installation which was very well done except my new part was not identical to my old part or the one in the YouTube. A translucent plastic housing on the part obstructed the installation so I needed to trim part of it away with a tin shear before attaching the part to the refrig. The waterline attachments were slip fit rather than what my old part had with compression nuts. I replaced all the plastic water lines using the slip fittings, turned the water back on and- all fittings leaked. Undid the fittings, trimmed the water lines and reattached- still leaked. So I contacted customer service who sent out a new part and followed the above procedure and everything went quickly with no leaks. I suggest you replace the two plastic water lines ( you will need to buy two slip fittings and two diameter lines) these are available at Home Depot. There is also a YouTube for this and it is a must see. My main supply line to the refrigerator is copper tubing. I trimmed the end of the tubing, filed it smoot, steelwooled the surface and installed a new brass compression ring befor reactching to the valve. Note, because of the first leaks, I found it easier to make all my connections including the electrical, plug the refrigerator back in and active the ice maker and water dispenser before reaching the valve the the frig back. Good luck.

Remove front cover did not remove wires remove ice and water unit took off flapper put new one on 5 minutes back together

the previous left behind a side by side, everything worked however the auger in the ice bucket was a little rusty. I wish that I could say it was all me but the truth of the matter was the videos on file.

They were nicely done and easy to follow as I took the unit apart and replaced the auger in about 30 minutes. Thanks for all your help in part look up.

Part attaches to metal plate near crushing fingers which attaches to ice holding bin. Remove about 6 screws total on each side of plate. You must disassemble the auger & other parts so you can reassemble it in the proper order. Not many parts but i always take pics to cut down on time. New part is at the other end of the auger and acts as the holde of the auger shaft. Picture a crankshaft with a bearing on each end so the auger rotates between new part and the other end of auger shaft. That's it.

I removed the back panel of the freezer to troubleshoot and found the coils to be completely frosted over and the bottom of the freezer was a block of ice. The cold air was not allowed to circulate over to the refrigerator side. I put a meter on the defrost heater at the bottom (basically it's a wire filaments encased in a glass tube) and there was no continuity which meant it was bad. I also took the defrost sensor (small round sensor at the top above the coils) and put it in a working freezer then after awhile I took it out and put a meter on it until it warmed it up and it clicked so I knew that worked. The defrost sensor should show continuity (closed circuit) when cold and no continuity (open circuit) when warm.
So at this point I knew the problem was the defrost heater due to no continuity. I purchased the defrost heater assembly which also came with a new sensor. Unplug the old and plug in the new. Super simple. The defrost cycle works as it should and now the refrigerator works perfect.

Use small putty knife to cut internal sealant on ice maker door trim piece. Then you can easily remove it.