CFE28TP4MEW2 General Electric Refrigerator - Instructions

First, I had to remove the freezer drawer front. This is 8 large phillips head screws. then remove the plastic cover over the drawer slides. to do this, remove the white center screw from the slide near where it attaches to the drawer front. then the plastic cover will slide off pushing to the rear of the slide. take off the slides from the freezer walls by removing the phillips screws and pulling them towards you. They have tabs/slots in the rear. remove the center tray support and support bars, too. the icemaker has to come out, that is just 2 phillips screws but you also have to disconnect the electrical connector. just squeeze the locking wings and rock/pull. a screw in the top center of the back panel comes out. Lift and pull the back panel out. The evaporator coil appears. The thermocouple is attached to the coil in the upper right. Cut that one's wires and take it out. Just cut back about an inch from the back of the thermocouple, there is not much slack. Seperate and strip the wires back about 3/8 inch. Do the same for the new thermocouple. I twisted the wires together and used a solder sleeve to join the wires. The sleeve is just a little plastic tube that has a ring of solder in it that melts with heat gun heat. You can join the wires using butt connectors or whatever method appeals to you. I just wound the extra wire and put a cable tie around it, there is plenty of hiding space in that area. Make sure the new thermocouple is contacting the coil firmly.At this point, for a test, I left everything apart, propped the drawer against the opening and plugged the fridge in. Note that the evaporator fan will not start spinning immediately! It will just sit there making little bumps like it wants to go. The temp in the coil has to get settled before the electronics in the refridge will tell the fan to spin. It takes maybe 20 minutes. Reassemble. Fridge and freezer work great. It does take several hours for all to get cold again.

I ordered 3 temperature Sensors Part#PS304103 and viewed the video. Got there, opened the frig. and it looked totally different and no place in any part of this frig. that took these sensors as viewed on the video. Totally baffled why these parts were listed for this frig. there was no place in this frig that would access for these parts. Serial # was HR443071.Maybe this model is out of date for these parts. Trying to find someone who can repair it. Any ideas???Purchased this GE in 2008. Model #is GSS25WSTFSS Thanks, for your help. JIM

per your instructions

Unplugged unit and removed vented cover over compressor section. The run capacitor is a simple fix 1 Phillips head screw and 2 spade wire connectors. For the temperature sensor I had to remove all drawers and the ice maker to remove the back cover to expose the condenser. Put a bowl at the drain stem in the rear of the unit and used a heat gun to defrost the coils on the condenser. Cut the wire about 3" from the sensor end . cut about the same off the new sensor stripped the wires put shrink wrap on each wire, attached butt connecors . heat gun for the shrink wrap and reassembled everything. Simple job that took about a half hour to do both. I will monitor the fridge for a couple of weeks to see if I need to change the control board.

Connected the 2 wires and pushed in the switch until it clicked.

Easy. Followed the video instrucations. the part was right there next to the compressor.

I started removing the switch by prying on the right side with a screwdriver, when it emerged enough I used pliers to finish removing it. I then unpluged rhe wires from the bad switch and pluged them on the new switch and "poped" it into the hole.

1. Removed and tested defrost heater, tests good. 2. Reinstalled defrost heater. 3. Removed and tested defrost over-temperature sensor, tests good. 4. Reinstalled over-temperature sensor using soldering iron, dielectric silicone grease, and heat-shrink tubing. 5. Removed the control printed circuit board and checked for blown fuse's, fuse's are all good. 6. Removed the defrost relay from the printed circuit board using soldering iron, bench tested the relay, it is good. 7. Soldered defrost relay back onto the circuit board, and reinstalled control board. 8. Removed and bench tested evaporator thermistor, the resistance is out of specification, ordered new thermister. 9. Installed new thermistor using soldering iron, dielectric silicone grease, and heat-shrink tubing. 10. Re-assembled refrigerator. 11. Installed temperature monitoring and recording instrumentation for 72 hour test. The defrost cycle is running correctly with a defrost termination temperature of around 90 deg-f. The defrost cycle ran twice while running the 72 hour test. 11. Removed test instrumentation and Put the unit back into service, The thermistor was the culprit. I bought the right part on the first shot, nice.

changed sensors did not repair problem,replaced damper with mechanical damper fixed problem.

I have a GE Profile French door refrig. It's only about 4 yrs old and the defroster stopped working. I read the other repair stories and was able to narrow it down to either the temp sensor, defrost timer, or main board. The refrig section was up to about 47 degrees and freezer was around 25. I could tell it was trying to cool but couldn't. So I tried the temp sensor first. I cut and spliced the new sensor on the outlet of the Evap. Coil and it took about 15 mins. Turned refrig back on and waited. The coil started to ice over after about 5 hrs I left the back panel off so I could see if and when then heater kicked on. After about 8 hrs I looked in and saw a faint glow and water trickling down and running out the drain. Turned out the sensor was bad and wasn't telling the main board it needed to defrost. I would try the sensor if you are having the same issues before spending a lot of money on the main board, defrost heater and or timer.

Followed the repair video, was spot on!!

luckly i have a bit of experience in refrigeration im an hvac technician by trade. this repair was a bit tricky in that i did not know at first if it was a Temperature Sensor issue or the main control board. I had tested the defrost termination thermostat and the defrost heater and as i suspected they were ok. Next i wanted to test the thermistors (temp sensors) it is hard to find technical data on these fridges. I needed to test the thermistors resistance @ a certian temperature to ensure they were working properly but where do u get such data? I also wanted to know some information about the logic programmed into the board (i.e when do you initiate defrost etc. . .). I had no such luck so i figured since i tested the defrost heater and thermostat and they were ok and all of the evap fans and such were working i'd order a circuit board and new thermistors. Got the CORRECT PARTS from this site in 2 business days and my fridge is working great! changing the parts was really easy, figuring out which parts to change was the only difficult thing about this job.

took out shelves and removed the back plate my removing 2 screws with a nutdriver.removed the old defrost timer and defrost heater which was really easy.then installed the new ones.the video i watched on the website was really helpfull.

Unplugged the refrigerator first....then on the inside of the fridge, I popped the temp sensor cover off (upper LH side) and exposed the old sensor. I snipped off the old sensor about 3" down from the end and connected the new sensor (which I trimmed down to about 3" long) with some heat shrink wire nuts/connectors. Let the fridge run for a day or so and confirmed the problem was solved! Oh yeah, there was no way to tell the 2 wires apart (power vs. ground) on the sensor. However there was a manufacturer's stamp on the wires. So note the orientation of the text and mark one of the wires with a sharpie on both the old and new sensor before trimming. This will give you a reference for which wires to connect when adding the new sensor to the old wires.

easy pry out, disconnect wiring, connect on new switch and press in switch.