Hello Boise and Meridian customers of Western Appliance Repair. Thanks for reading! Today I’d like to talk about a unusual refrigerator repair for a customer in Boise. They complained of a non functioning icemaker.
Many modern refrigerators have the icemaker located in the freezer door. While this is very convenient it does pose problems sometimes. If the engineering design or assembly is not done properly you have problems like we have here – broken wiring at the bottom of the door.
The wiring at the bottom of the door goes through a lot of stress when the freezer door is opened and closed constantly during normal use. This refrigerator wiring gets twisted and turned each time the door is moved. This can be a big challenge for designers. Occasionally the twisting of the wiring results in breakage. This breakage can occur in 20 years or it can occur in 2. Or , it may not occur at all. I would say that mostly it does not happen. Our refrigerator is 25 years old and we’ve had no problems.
Here is a two-year-old refrigerator. The outer wire insulation is cut right through and the wiring was severed from rubbing against the sharp edge. The red-wire in the picture carries the DC voltage to the icemaker motor. Without this voltage you will not get ice.
This repair left us few options other than to resolder the wire and hope it lasts a few more years. For a permanent fix the door would have to be replaced which wasn’t an option due to the expense. In a case like this the manufacturer should be contacted due to bad factory design or assembly.
