One night we went to get some ice cream and instead of getting the normal cold solid cream there was a liquid mess. Something was wrong with our fridge/freezer (Model GSH25JSXNSS) !
So I ripped open the back on the freezer (take shelves off, remove light cover, take off two screws, take off the grounding clip and remove the white cover) to find this:
There was so much frost the coolant was getting frozen and unable to absorb the heat out of the freezer.
From searching online there were 3 possible problems: 1) Defrost heating element 2) temperature sensor 3) electronic board issue. Since the first one was most probable I unplugged each side (pink wire and blue wire) and took out the screw on each side then I removed the element and its protective cover. I tested the coil for electrical conductivity and there wasn’t any. When I took out the element itself I found this:
As you can see the element itself broke apart. So I ordered a new one (Defrost Heater Replacement Part: WR51X10055 ). This is the link to it*:
After this, I defrosted the freezer, put the food back and waited a few days.
When I went to install the new element I realized I probably should defrost the freezer again. So again I broke out my heat gun and was careful not to melt any of the plastic. About 10 minutes later it was mostly dry. Next I plugged and screwed in the new element and we have a working automatic defrost system again!
If you want to watch the whole process in my video, check it out here:
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