Frigidaire fridge not working not cooling, easy fix. | Josh Cobb

hey what's up guys today we're gonna be working on this frigidaire fridge and uh i got it for free somebody was giving it away and it's in excellent shape it just needs to be cleaned up and wiped down this is the freezer shelf but at first i thought that was rust it's not uh it is just a dirty it's just really dirty some moisture and that'll wipe right off of there same thing with kenda down here it's just dirty so it needs to be cleaned up real good otherwise overall excellent shape nothing's broken all the shelves are intact seals are good on the doors it's not that old i think it's a 2008 yeah excellent condition and one other thing that i always note too it doesn't smell bad it smells fine so this will clean up perfect i'm actually going to use this here in the shop i'm going to replace that tiny little fridge if you see it all the way over there once i get some bottled water and a couple meals in there it's tapped out so this is actually gonna end up being for me we're gonna use it here at the shop uh on the shelf at lowe's i don't knock the phone out of my hand is the kit for the ice maker uh it's actually cheaper than it is on amazon so i'll probably pick that up a little bit later today and we'll get it popped in there first thing we're going to do is just make sure that this can be fixed and so the issue uh the well it's not really a customer but the the guy had said that the motor was not working and i really didn't question it beyond that because what happens around here we get really bad storms almost like electrical storms and constantly in our area power's going out power's going out or your power flickers and all the houses and new houses alike it happens a lot in our area and then the surrounding towns so a lot of times after those severe storms i'll get some calls saying hey my fridge quit working do you work on fridge fridges and i don't work on anybody's personal stuff but what i find is that a lot of fridges will go up for sale or people are just getting rid of them so they're scrapping them out because within the last couple days which is right around the storm time they go bad and in this case here the motor is not working is talking about the compressor and what typically happens is people don't put surge protectors on these like you need a surge protector on the plug and you can buy them for like 20 bucks a real good one for 20 bucks even at walmart but if you go to home depot or lowe's you can get a surge protector that's rated for refrigerator and what that does is it helps protect these parts here that get blown out burn out so we're gonna take a look at this if i can get this off of here but this is just a little 10 part on amazon and i've got a few of them on hand so i'm going to put it back on and we're just going to plug it in and see what happens but typically this overload protector right here will break or blow out or just become worn down to a point to where just any type of power trips it and then i don't see the somewhere there is i don't see it but somewhere there's a capacitor start capacitor and sometimes they're on the back of here but i don't see this one it's not yeah i don't see it so maybe it's somewhere else i don't know maybe it's missing maybe it fell out who knows so we'll just plug this back on we're going to plug it in and just see if anything happens and i've got my plug right oh it doesn't reach hold on a second i've got an extension so let's see what happens here so i probably sound like i am not even awake yet it's actually super early it's getting up to like 100 degrees with the humidity is insane so i try to get over here to the workshop super early before it gets too hot you probably hear the fans and the ac running in the background it can only do so much okay so nothing i mean i plugged it in we got absolutely nothing we're dead as a doorknob see if the lights work okay so we're getting power the fridge is receiving power so what i'm going to do let me go track down that part i feel like i'll show you let me go grab that other part okay so this is what's kind of weird is this is i have one of these laying around from an older fridge that got scrapped but uh this part is missing on this part in here now i kind of looked around and traced these wires let me shine a light in here so you can see but i traced these wires that come out of this at this point all it is is an overload protector and they just go right up into the unit there there's no additional spot on here anywhere with like a control board or anything like that that actually goes up into the fridge and to the lights and all that so i mean kind of what you see is what you get sometimes you will see mounted off to the side like up here or back in there a tubular kind of round capacitor that's mounted to the wall but not typically on this very plain jane refrigerator setup normally it's where it's supposed to be so my guess is i mean it's possible that uh the guy who owned this was trying to watch a youtube video or something similar to this one and uh pulled this off and was checking it out seeing if it's something he wanted to tackle and pulled this apart and forgot to put it back on there that's possible okay so swapped it out now you can see it's got the capacitor on the back now this old one actually doesn't look like there's a place for one huh yeah that's weird so anyway we're gonna put this one on okay now let's plug it in and see what happens see if we get anything nothing sometimes it takes a minute but in this case we're still dead as a doorknob now the condenser fan also is not turning on so maybe this is not the issue at all all right so i'm gonna put this back and show you what the other most common issue is now if uh and here's why i think it might actually be the defrost timer is because this should have kicked on if this circuitry was good but only this piece was bad this eventually would have kicked on because it's supposed to come on the same time the compressor is so that's also kind of a tell that hey that kicks on but this doesn't so it's probably that part and i didn't actually think about that until just now so uh so let's swap so now i'm thinking it's not this part so i'm gonna swap it back and there's no spot for that capacitor to plug in on the back here so i don't know maybe there is one built in inside here so hang on just say okay so now we're gonna go move on so if you're if you're trying to fix your fridge and you've landed on this video we'll get to the bottom of it i'll show you what to fix if you're a rebuilder if you're somebody who buys appliances fixes them and then resells them this is how it goes you get stiff sometimes for free maybe you would have paid 10 20 50 for this fridge and you're trying to figure out what's wrong with it it is a hunt and peck type of deal until you figure it out and so actually hold up we need to plug this back in and you're just kind of narrowing it down trying to figure it out okay so we plug it back in we know the compressor's not turning on so let me show you issue number two all right right here on the control this is essentially where the brain of it right here and there's not much to it so we see that it's on uh this is the coldest setting and that's zero so with this being on it should be working okay so all this is here this is just a little thermostat it's got a dial on it has two wires that come off and the those are power wires now right here where this hole is is the defrost timer they're also like 10 12 bucks on amazon but what happens is um so if it's not the issue back there that we just troubleshooted and we found out it's not you come up here and here's how we're going to test this this has a dial that's on a timer like an old mechanical timer and it rotates and it's simply on off switch on a rotating dial that turns the fridge on turns it off and what happens is same thing with the surges the power surges can blow out these motors they can also just go bad this is 2008 though so my guess is probably a power surge so anyway uh you probably can't see it with this light right here but maybe you can so there's a dial and it's designed it's slotted up in there for you to be able to take a screwdriver and just kind of feel for it well let's see let me get it in there there we go a boom that's what it was so all i did was i manually turned it and the second i clicked it it turned on and so what we have now it's running we're gonna make sure that it gets cold down to temperature all that and go ahead and order that part i might actually have one i'm gonna check let's see now we're running this fan's running and the compressor fired right up so that part was not bad and if i had noticed that at first when i plugged it in that that started up but then this didn't then i really would have dove deep into that part but i see so many of them just being that part a lot of times i just assume that's what's wrong with it in this case though it was the defrost timer so let me go see if i've got one otherwise i'll throw a link up in the description and uh throw a picture up of what i'm about to order for this all right so here's what i've got i've got two used ones that i pulled out of fridges so these should be working they're both eight hour timers so what it means is it's gonna run for eight hours defrost for 30 minutes and it runs on that cycle this one is brand new uh and it's universal you can set it for whatever you want you could do 8 hours 30 minutes you could do 12 hours so this could also be used in a deep freeze but it is let's see that's the part number right there if you wanted to look it up i think it's twelve dollars on amazon let's see if we can get this to focus here yeah so this is the defraud so you could set it for four six eight ten or twelve and then i think the minimum is kind of 20 minutes um but standard is eight hours 30 minutes so you would just put a little a tiny flathead screwdriver in there now one of the one side of this you probably can't see it but one side's a little arrow so you would just point the arrowhead to whichever one you want with your flathead screwdriver and that's how that's how simple it is super easy and as you can see they all have this same setup here and that's a plug that'll plug on so it can only go on one way but since i have two good ones here that are used i'm just gonna slap one of those in there so let me grab a tripod so you can see how i take this thing apart swap it out real quick let's we'll get that set up okay we're set up now in the time it took me to get this thing tripod ready and find my drill it's actually super cold in the freezer now and it's starting to get cold down here in the fridge so this thing beyond this issue here is working perfectly so let's take that out all you're gonna need to fix this is uh a phillips head screwdriver i'm gonna use my drill but uh all you're gonna need if you're trying to fix it yourself is just a phillips head screwdriver nothing fancy yeah we got a screw now that okay so those two i don't know what those two screws were holding in the two screws we're supposed to take out actually use a 1 4 driver so you need a socket or a little tip on your drill you can just pull out the bit if you have one and just use that that'll work too whole point here is not to have to go out and buy something hopefully you can fix your stuff without buying a bunch of stuff so we got two back here as well yeah i can feel that air coming out it's ice cold and yes i'm going to unplug this here in just a sec but i'm going to show you with the light what we're going to do getting on here okay so this little timer right here i can actually see it running so it just gets to a point you can see that here this is it and it looks a lot like the other one it's just got a clear piece here and you know this might actually be a replacement uh these want to clear here i found are super cheap they're like six bucks five six bucks on ebay or amazon so if you're gonna buy one get a good one like supko they make a good one uh you know i i find them be about the 12 mark is a good one check your reviews that kind of thing but uh so we're gonna unplug this and then i'll show you how to take this off i already took the two screws out that are holding this thing on so i'm gonna sit here and say it's all in blue in the face always unplug your appliances before you start messing with this especially if you excuse me if you've never done this before don't do this here with it all plugged in but uh you know i'm not gonna make an excuse for myself so i'm gonna unplug this and then we'll go ahead and swap this out okay there's actually a little more light here than i thought there was going to be so we should be fine so all we have to do is pull this apart now on here it's going to tell us what this thing is as far as how many hours it runs and then how many hours it uh okay so this one's a 10 hour and 30 minutes so this one runs 10 hours defrost 30 minutes i'm i'm almost gonna bet you that this is a replacement i think it is i think that this has been replaced with the cheapo super cheap i mean this is probably like that cheapest one they could find and swapped it out uh probably why i went bad so fast anyway so uh i'm just gonna put this 8 hour 30 minute in there it should be fine it'll just defrost a little bit more frequently but just being a shop fridge it's no big deal so let's grab this here now here's another tip while i'm doing this i'll tell you if you if you do this super fast like inside of a minute so you unplug it come over here swap these out and then go plug it back in don't do that the compressor needs a minute to cool off to calm down basically before you plug it back in so you don't want to replicate uh like your power go flickering or going off and on because you'll trip that little part the first part we're looking at oh that was hard to get off there uh the first part we were looking at back on the compressor if you unplug and plug your fridge right back in that is going to trip and when it trips like that a lot of times what happens is it uh it'll just continue to trip and it's called i call it a a boot loop and uh it just continues to trip and you'll hear it clicking back there and then it cools down and then it surges the power and it clicks again and it'll just continue to do that until you unplug your fridge wait 10 minutes and plug it back in so now that i've unplugged this i'm going to wait 10 minutes before i plug this thing back in your deep freezes is the same way so a lot of times people's power will flicker and then all of a sudden the next day they notice their freezer is uh defrosting and it's not getting cold well if they just stood there and listened to it for 10 20 minutes they'd probably hear that clicking coming from the compressor so that's a tip also with your deep freeze unplug it wait 10 20 minutes depending on how long how hot the compressor is and how long it's been sitting there power looping like that and you might find that there's no issue at all make sure these holes are lined up all right i've had a lot of people ask me what i use here if you're a rebuilder and you're still using screwdrivers this is a 12 volt dewalt impact with trigger control so depending on how much pressure i give it is how fast it's going to go it also has a speed control up here too so you don't want an impact that's going to blow out your screws and ruin this plastic up here but i use this works great also i have a video of how i put the magnets on the side because when you're working on appliances you'll switch between phillips head this one fourth and five i think that's 5 16 a lot just all day long and trying to keep track of those is a pain so that's a little tip there for you too all right let's get this thing put back into place so you've got a little hole back there a little um air tube vent tube so you just want to make sure this inserts into that otherwise you'll be fighting this all day long just going to make sure our wires are pushed back down okay all right something's not mine okay oh yeah that's right there last we fell all the way down [Music] okay put back together you know this might actually be missing the cover that's supposed to go here uh but if yours has the cover you probably i don't think you would have had to take it off to do anything we just did so all right that should be it i'm gonna give it a few more minutes before i plug it back in but we'll make sure this new one works in just a sec all right it has been about 10 minutes total so this thing's coincidentally in its defrost cycle so i'm just going to turn it on and then we'll make sure that it continues to work i've already tested that one so i know it's good but what will happen is you can sit there and turn it and then it'll run all the way until it gets back to its defrost cycle and it should have two defrost cycles so what you want to be careful of is turning it it starts running and then you don't actually fix it because it'll it can go through the first defrost cycle just fine but when it circles all the way back around at that 24 hour mark to the one where it didn't come out of it'll go into that defrost cycle and then stop right there again and then if you're not paying attention you can lose all your food that way so just turning this thinking oh maybe it'll start working it won't it'll go all the way around you hit the 24-hour mark and it'll stop again so uh so and in order to thoroughly test this used one i just put in here i'm going to want to keep up with this stretch now for the next 24 hours to ensure that yes it does go all the way through which is fine i'm going to be over here checking it anyway i've still got all the cleaning to do and with anything that i bring in i always run it for a few days anyway even if i'm keeping it to test it and thoroughly make sure so if i were gonna sell this one i'd probably run this for a week at least just to be sure that it's gonna be good to go so a lot of times i'll jump on other projects and i wouldn't even do with the cleaning and stuff until i know 100 seven days down the road that it's freezing there's no issues with anything and then it's good to go so uh i mean that's that's it for this video i might do a little follow-up here uh in the next few days uh showing it cleaned up and i would also definitely get the ice maker so you know we'll just do a part two on this i'm gonna let this run for a few days make sure it's good to go uh and then i'll do a part two video with the cleaning installing the ice maker i'm sure some of you guys would like to see how to put an ice maker in one of these uh so yeah so we'll call it good for this video and then uh just look forward to that part two i really do appreciate you guys taking the time to watch my video if you found this information useful please like and subscribe that's going to get this video out to more people you know there might be quite a few people who are just looking to fix their fridge and do it on the cheap side hopefully this video helped them out so uh once again there like subscribe and if you have any questions or if there's anything else you'd like to see drop it in the comments for me so that's gonna do it for today guys thanks again have a great day

Channel: Josh Cobb

Views: 261,796

Keywords: fridge not cooling, fridge not cooling enough, fridge not cooling freezer ok, ge fridge not cooling, fridge not cooling but light is on, refrigerator not cooling samsung, refrigerator not cooling or freezing, fridge not cooling but freezer works, refrigerator not cooling properly, refrigerator not cooling, ge refrigerator not cooling side by side, fridge not working, refrigerator not cooling enough, refrigerator not cooling but freezer is fine, JcB&#%, Josh Cobb

Id: WfTEvQct3AE

Length: 26min 37sec (1597 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 25 2021