ETS22SBPBRBS General Electric Refrigerator - Overview

The freezer in my side-by-side kept warming up -- often 20 degrees or more, which of course caused the fresh food side to warm up also. I do a lot of jump-in-with-both-feet home repairs, but never on a large appliance. Not having an ohmmeter, which cost about $100 for a reliable one, I took the symptoms to the internet. Countless self-help sites and U-Tube videos later, I was positive it was one of two possible problems, either the defrost thermostat was broken and the defroster wasn't coming out of its cycle or the temperature sensor wasn't reading the correct temp and thus kicking in the fan motor when needed. Fortunately I found both parts easily on PartSelect.com and the total cost for both, including shipping, was $30, less than 1/3 of the cost of an ohmmeter. Not knowing for sure which part it was that was bad, I ordered both, figuring, since I had to pull out the panel anyway, I might just as well replace them both ... the price was right. (In retrospect I should have order 4 Temperature Sensors as my fridge has two in both the freezer side and the Fresh Food side. Any one of them being bad could have caused the same problem. Fortunately, I was lucky because it was either ONLY the Defrost Thermostat or I just happened to pick the right Sensor, but the repair worked.)

The repair was easy: Unplug the power. A Nut Driver removed the four screws holding on the panel in the back of the freezer. A screw driver removes the one screw holding the lamp cover in place. Remove the light bulbs, pull off the panel and right above the freezer coils you'll see both parts -- plain as day. (If your coils are clogged with ice, you will probably need de-ice first.) Cut the wires to both parts as close to the parts as you can to leave as much wire exposed as possible. Strip the ends of all four wires about 1/2 inch and also on the new parts. Match up the wires in the fridge to the wires on the parts and twist the ends together (Note: both wires on the Sensor are white so they match up either way, but the two wire on the thermostat will need to match up orange to orange and pink to pink.) I used silicone filled wire nuts, which you can buy at any hardware store or use your own wing nuts and fill them with silicone or shoe goo which works just as well ... anything to keep the moisture out and prevent the wires ends from corroding. Tuck the wires up and replace the panel, light bulbs and light cover That's it. Very easy. By far the hardest part was wedging my wide body into the narrow freezer compartment. Some one-handed work added a little extra time to the project.

In my case the freezer fan didn't kick in for about twenty minutes after I plugged it back in, but I assume that it either begins in the defrost mode or it takes that long for it to reset itself ... either way the repair worked great.

I went to a GE repair center to explain my problem, the service center reccomended that I have a techinician come out o look at it. $75.00 for the visit and what ever labor and materials wuld cost.

I went on line to see if there were others having this same problem and found that there were many with the same problem.

After reading some of the ways that people found out what was wrong ...it became a matter of three components, the timer, heater or thermostat.

I tried the most common component and the less expensive one first , the thermostat switch I installed it very easily snipping two wires and attaching the news using wire nuts I used the diagram on this website to pinpoint the component and there has not been a problem since.

My refrigerator began to overheat and the everything was thawing!! The condenser fan motor had seized and I thought this is something even I can replace.

I did a Google search on the refrigerator model number. The link to your site looked promising and I clicked on it. I was taken to your web page for my refrigerator and I clicked on the schematic for the condenser assembly.

The schematic had the parts I needed labeled clearly so this layman could be sure to get the right ones.

I ordered the parts at 12:45PM Monday and selected overnight shipping. The parts arrived at 8:35AM Tuesday (Thank you FedEx). I installed the parts and my refrigerator is up and running again.

To get to the condenser fan motor I took off the back panel on the fridge that covers the condenser, fan and coil. The fan/motor assembly is attached to a bracket I removed with two screws. Pulled the bracket assembly out of the back of the fridge, removed the fan blade and then the motor, and put the new motor on the bracket and stuck the new fan blade on the motor spindle. The trickiest part was getting the complete assembly back in. Just went slowly and took my time. Reconnected the wires, no problems. I took pictures of everything that I disassembled BEFORE I disassembled it in case I wasn't sure how something went back in but this job was so simple I didn't need the pictures.

I’m not sure how I could improve on this except maybe you could ship a refrigerator technician, too, to do the install.

Thank you PartSelect everything worked out better than I could have hoped and I saved $220.00 compared to what a repair service was quoting.