Defrost Heater and Thermostat Assembly

Hello Philip, Thank you for the question. We suggest testing the Defrost Heater and Thermostat Assembly. Before you test the part for continuity, please unplug the appliance from the electrical outlet or turn the circuit breaker off and then remove the heater from the refrigerator. A continuity test will not work on some defrost heaters, because the ohms reading may be too high to register on a continuity test. If you have an auto ranging multimeter, set it to the ohms setting. If you have a manual ranging multimeter, set it to the lowest ohms setting. Place one of each of the probes on each of the heater's wires or terminals. You should get an approximate reading of 10 to 150 ohms. If the display on the meter does not change or if your ohms reading is far off from that then you have a bad heating element. Where there is a thermostat attached to the heater you will need to make sure that it has cooled down below its closing temperature before doing the ohms test. You can let the sensor warm up to room temperature. With the sensor warmed up to room temperature the sensor should read approximately 6.2K Ohms at 68°F. With the thermistor submerged is a glass full of ice water, the sensor should be very close to 32°F which should read approximately 16.3K Ohms. We hope this helps!