GSA20IBMDFWW General Electric Refrigerator - Instructions

I followed your video and completely dismantled the refrigerator evaporator motor, fan, brackets, and grommet, I completely cleaned the refrigerator including the cooling coils. I then ordered the evaporator motor ,fan, grommets, lid bumper, and brackets. The order would take a week to arrive. In the meantime I cleaned and reassembled all the old parts, waiting for the new ones to come. Guess what! The refrigerator was quiet as a mouse. I really did not need the new parts, but I kept them anyway just for good luck. Not bad for a refrigerator that's twenty four years old.

After unplugging the refrigerator-freezer and emptying out the contents I snipped off the refrigerator thermistor, stripped off the wire insulation and used a butt splice. That did not solve the problem. So, a day later I unplugged the refrigerator again, transferred the freezer contents to a newly purchased small freezer unit, took off the back panel inside the freezer portion, and saw a large amount of ice build-up on the silver coils inside. This ice was quickly melted off using a hair dryer and packing towels below this accumulated ice. Then I snipped off the two freezer thermister sensors and the defrost sensor. I soldered the wires together for a hard splice, wrapped the individual wires with rubber electrical tape, and then wrapped that with plastic electrical tape. After re-assembly, the refrigerator-freezer has been working flawlessly for over a week at optimal temperatures.

Remove ice maker and all of it's accessories in order to remove the panel covering the fan. Don't drop the screws!
Unscrew the lower fan bracket. You will see the lower red rubber grommet. Hold fan motor with one hand and push the fan off the shaft and into the compartment above. Then remove the round retainer thing below it by holding it and pulling down on the motor assembly. Install new grommet on upper part. and put it all together.
REMEMBER where the fan is on the shaft. It has about one inch of shaft placement. I put mine so that most of it was above the hole that the fan goes into and about 20 percent showing below the sheet metal.
Also check to see if your fan is damaged. Mine was not.
This refrigerator has been awesome! I have had many issues but have been able to fix all of them for the last 15 years!

take the metal cover off the defrost thermostat is on top of the coil take the thermostat off from the coil cut the two wires take the wire and strip the ends off take the new thermostat the wires are color coded wire them together put the thermostat back on coil your done real easy

I followed the video for my model refrigerator on parts select. My hint: when returning the back panel of the freezer, it's slightly adjustable left and right to avoid grazing the fan.

Per vidios

Bent the motor bracket down, then using a rat tail file, elongated the holes in the back panel of the refrigerator to secure the fan in the "centered" position. This was a problem that was with the refrig. since it was made. The parts involved were perfect. NO problem at all installing them.

Must have spent 10+ hours solid looking up info on the internet. Our ice maker had broken years ago, the door flap had broken years ago and I thought this was the end of a fridge after just 6 years 8 months.

GE offered a "broken appliance" warranty for $379 for one year, with no guarantee that when a technician came to look at it, the repairs would be covered by the warranty!!! No thank you, you just want me to buy a new fridge. Okay, challenge on, I'll fix it myself.

I took everything from the back of the freezer out. Spent an hour defrosting (note: use hair dryer next time). Ruled out a motherboard problem (even though it appears I have the old style motherboard), removed dust build up from fan intake. I could not get the heater to come on, so I cut off the thermostat defroster and connected the wires together. The only way to get the heater on was to set the freezer control to 0 / zero.

So, ordered part from partselect.com and it arrived the next day!!!. Installed and unit appears to be defrosting okay after a week.

So now I'm back to order the ice maker part. The door flap will wait for another time.

Note: I've put in the time for novices and recognizing how the freezer is constructed.

Time includes taking everything out of the freezer section, unscrewing everything, diagnosing problem, fixing the problem, putting everything back. I would say allow 3-4 hours and pat yourself on the back if you do it quicker.

Note#2, if you have a large build up there is a hole in the floor of the freezer section. If the water does not evaporate it will run out of the hole and into your wooden floors! Place towels both inside and outside the unit just in case!

I have not yet done the repair. After watching this repair video two problems came to mind. First I only ordered one grommet not knowing that there were two (or more I don't yet know). The second problem is that this video must be for a fridge from like the 1940, but it looks NOTHING like mine from 2008. The manual shows a bazillion parts and frankly I'm just a wee bit afraid to get started, and I am generally very handy, buuuttttttttt I don't know about this one

turn off the refrigerator,then open the cover and saw lot of ice. then get a hair dryer blower and blow a heat to melt the ice. cut the thermostat defrost.

Took cover off, pushed blade on, and replaced cover

took a little more effort than the video show to remove old module and replace new. Works fine now.

It was way to ez to install only a couple of minutes that's it

Find online diagram of freezer section for reference. Disconnect power, remove evap cover plate (214) by removing one of the drawer guide rails.

As evidence of your problem, you might see a giant block of ice built up around the coil. Let this defrost this before continuing.

Find THERMOSTAT DEFROST (24) sensor and clip connecting wires. Match replacement sensor wires by color. Twist and solder wires; or wire-nuts and twisting alone might be okay. If not soldering, seal the wire-nuts connections from moister with a good sizeable piece of duct tape. Make sure your wires are out of the way and not left dangling on the evap heater coil, where they could melt.

Suggest concurrent replacement of evap fan motor if this has not already been done in the past.. This become noisy with age and damage from the ice build up seems to have made mine worse.

first removed two srews removed rear panel hair dryer to melt ice (took 30 minutes) cut two wires to thermostat spliced onto new part clipped it onto tube -done replace rear panel and 2 screws. very easy job after reading other letters and their experience -saved myself $500.00