Fixing the evaporator fan for our side-by-side freezer
Difficulty Level (Easy, Medium, Hard, Insane):
Easy
Process:
When my wife was starting to put away our groceries last night she noticed that the freezer seemed to be a lot warmer than usual and some of the thin items had started to thaw. Most items were still very well frozen, but there was definitely something wrong.
We unloaded our freezer and put (almost) all the stuff in our deep freeze but some frozen apple sauce didn't fit so in the tub they went because I wasn't sure how long we'd have to be without the freezer.
Here's the order of dismantling:
1. Food
2. Shelves
3. Ice maker unit
4. Plastic cover
5. Metal cover
6. Fan housing
After I had taken off the metal cover, before I knew what was actually wrong I looked at the cooling coils and they were all pretty iced up. After melting off all the ice with a propane torch (I went very easy on the heat so as to not damage anything or light the freezer on fire) they started icing up again right away so I knew that the actual cooling still worked. After some more trouble shooting I found that the issue was with the fan that circulates the cold air so I had to take off the fan housing as well.
Once the fan housing was off I clearly saw what was wrong: one of the little cables that went to the fan had broken right off with the years of use. Unfortunately, there was no plug on the motor and the motor housing itself was an injection molded piece that could not be taken apart.
Since I had apple sauce thawing and I didn't want it to spoil and I didn't want to bother a neighbor to see if I could "borrow" their freezer I decided I was gonna try to fix the broken off wire.
I hauled out my cut-off saw and cut around the broken wire, then finished with a smaller dremel bit to clear a little more than 1/4" of the buried wire. Once I cleared enough solid metal I soldered the wire back on, used some shrink tubing around the wire, masked the area with some tape and filled it in with 2-component (dollar store) epoxy glue.
After putting the fan back in the housing and the housing back in the freezer, I followed the steps above in reverse and put our frozen food back in.
After calling a local repair shop they advised me that it would take 6-8 weeks to get the part and the part alone would cost over $70! Glad I was able to fix it for FREE!!!
Videos:
Pictures:
 |
| All the freezer parts on the countertop |
 |
| The inside of the freezer behind all the panels |
 |
| The fan unit |
 |
| The broken off wire |
 |
| Grinding off the plastic around the broken off wire |
 |
| Grinding fine details with dremel |
 |
| Enough of the wire exposed to start soldering |
 |
| Close-up of the two wires that need to be soldered |
 |
| Shrink tube kit from princess auto |
 |
| After the wires were soldered |
 |
| After the shrink tubing was fixed |
 |
| The fan, fan motor and motor housing |
 |
| Masking off the area with some scotch tape |
 |
| After the cavity was filled with 2-component epoxy glue and the scotch tape was removed |
 |
| The fan installed back in the housing |
 |
| Another shot of the installed fan |
 |
| After all the panels were installed again |
 |
| After the ice maker unit was installed again |
 |
| Ready for the food |
Tools:
Drill
Socket set
Dremel
Air cut-off saw
Soldering iron
Knife
Materials:
1" 3.5mm diameter shrink tube
Two-component epoxy glue
Cost:
$0.00
Time:
2.5 hrs
Savings:
Probably at least $200 for the tech and the part
Conclusion:
Works great!
0 comments:
Post a Comment