Icemaker repair question.

July 2, 2009 6:55 AM

I can't repair our icemaker because nothing seems to be wrong with it, with the glaring exception that it does not make any ice.

Until recently our icemaker would make shards of ice-chips and fling them across the freezer, but it has stopped doing even that now. It doesn't appear to fill or move at all.

I've gone through this troubleshooting guide. We have a "modular" unit which is almost identical to the photos in that guide. Every component passes the tests with the exception of the water inlet valve which I cannot find on the back of our fridge.

Is the water inlet valve inside the fridge wall? If so, is this a user-serviceable part? It looks like I'd have to disassemble a large section of the back of the fridge if I wanted to get to anything in there. I would prefer to avoid doing this.

Is there any reason to think that even though the icemaker passed all the diagnostic tests that it could still be malfunctioning? I'm hesitant to buy a new icemaker if the problem is really external to it.

posted by odinsdream to home & garden (4 comments total)

When this happened to me, it was because the intake pipe (the thing that fed water to the icemaker - probably hooks up to the water inlet valve to which you refer) was frozen. I turned off the freezer for half a day, and it started working again.
posted by ignignokt at 6:59 AM on July 2

Seconding ignignokt, and adding that the intake pipe continued to freeze after thawing it... the repairman who looked at it said he had seen it often and that the only thing wrong was piss poor design on the part of the manufacturer (GE, if I'm not mistaken.) The cost to fix it and reroute the pipe would have been similar to the cost of a new refrigerator/freezer. So instead, I bought a few ice trays and saved myself a couple of hundred dollars...

Although, feh! I'm still irritated...
posted by Rewind at 7:09 AM on July 2

I can see clearly into the tube inside the freezer and there does not appear to be any ice in it. If it's frozen further back than I can see I am not sure what I could do about it long-term.
posted by odinsdream at 7:45 AM on July 2

I was able to prevent the freezing after the initial defrosting by keeping the freezer at a warmer setting.
posted by ignignokt at 8:31 AM on July 2