MZD2752GRW Maytag Refrigerator - Instructions

The ice maker was not getting water. I hotwired the water valve by switching the connectors for the water dispenser and ice maker water valves and water flowed into the icemaker when the water dispenser lever was pushed. I wronly assumed the water valve was good. I removed the icemaker and determined that the gear motor was not getting power in the position the icemaker had stopped.In this position, the thermostat determines when the motor gets power so I replaced the thermostat. The icemaker still would not get water! As it turns out, the water solenoid was sticking due to a deteriorated rubber washer which let the solenoid plunger get too far out of the magnetic field. I replaced the water solenoid assy and all is well. Don't get fooled by hotwiring the valve. If it isn't getting water, the solenoid probably is the culprit.

First of all, let me say that I'm a 50 year old single woman. If I can do this repair, anyone can! After unscrewing the back of the unit that houses the compressor, I found the relay overload switch which is attached to the compressor. I pulled the part off and discovered that it comes in one piece. The replacement part came in 3 pieces. I intially thought they sent the wrong part. After a little thinking outside of the box, I figured out that the replacement part was indeed the correct part and that it comes in 3 pieces instead of one. It would have taken 5 minutes to repair if I had realized this early on. Once replaced, the refrigerator/freezer was cooling within 10 min. I sent the Run Capacitor back after telephoning a customer service rep. She was so courteous and helpful! What a fabulous company. I highly recommend. I saved myself approx. $250.00 doing it myself.

Unplug the refrigerator. Remove face plate located in the upper back of the refrigerator compartment. Remove face place bracket on the right using nut driver. Removing these screws also frees the metal case enclosing the Defrost Timer. Pull the case away from the back of the refrigerator exposing the Defrost timer. Remove the electrical plug from the Defrost Timer. Then remove the Defrost Timer from the case by removing the two screws securing it. Reverse the procedure to install the new Defrost Timer.

Removed Enclosure, removed solenoid, removed yoke from motor, installed motor and installed solenoid. Then re installed enclosure.

The difficulty was removing yoke from motor shaft, left hand threads that were hard to identify. No place to hold shaft so it turned when trying to remove yoke.

Some minor difficulty re attaching electrical harness for motor and solenoid as I had to do it by feel. Removal was easy as the motor was just hanging and I removed the solenoid before removing the enclosure.

Replaced the compressor with the new one I purchased from you. Installed new parts and recharged unit. The refrigerator / freezer is working better than new. Thanks for the great deal on the compressor. It was here in 3 days. All the parts fit exactly and had no difficulty in the installation or startup. The directions for the wiring were a great help also. Thanks again.

Through experience I determined the problem was with the compressor trip switch. It's the small white piece that looks like a flat fuse.

The parts arrived in 3 working days. Instructions were included - very easy to understand. From start to finish I replaced the switch in about 15 minutes. Frig is now working perfectly.

3 pieces come along in the kit - however, all I needed was the switch, but for the price I changed out all three to assure compatibilty.

I also ordered the cover which was not needed.

A Happy Customer! {:-)

Perhaps a helpful hint:

When aI received the hose adapter/connector, I inserted the 2 hose ends only to have water drip from the connection.
I used a utility knife to remove an inch from each side, then reinserted the hoses. That made the differnce. Dry as a bone.

LG

The tiny piece of plastic that holds the wire that shuts off the icemaker, broke early on with our fridge (after just a few months.) We superglued it, but last week it bit the dust for good.

Once I got this part, I removed the freezer door and trays, and pulled the icemaker out by removing 3 flathead screws and unplugging the cables. Laying in the freezer on the floor was a bit unconfortable, but not too bad.

Then I inspected the icemaker. There was no obvious way to remove the part without disassembling the front of the unit (where the motor is) to release the spindle and free the part, so I did that - 3 or 4 nuts was all that held it together. Once that was out, I removed the spindle, swapped out the part, and put it all back together and back in the freezer. Plugged it in and waited.

It took a while to start making ice. Like 5 hours. Now it's going pretty slow (much slower than before.) Haven't had time to look into it, but my suspicion is the rubber hose that feeds water into the icemaker is blocked with ice or kinked. In any case, we have ice now (but not a lot), and the unit shuts itself off properly. However, we went from having too much ice (thing never shut off) to too little (thing makes ice too slow), so I need to shoot for somewhere in the middle ;)

removed all 6 screws in back of fridge. located the condenser the relay was a white like circut to the left of the unit. The entire pience comes off easy using a flat screw driver to pry it off the pins.
The replacement came in 2 pieces insted of 1.
I replaced the relay and then the overload reconnected the wire harness back the way it was before. The new relay has a larger connector prong for the live wire so the kit comes with a jumper wire so the original wire harness can be used without splitting the cabel made the repair very easy. Also the new capacitor is bigger and better so I replaced that as well. The capacitor makes sure the relay gets stable current so its good to have a working one.

I won't repeat the removale process, straight forward. The issue is removing the U shaped driver on the motor. You have to trun it clockwise (looking at it from the front) to remove it from the drive shaft in order to install the motor on the new shelf. The problem is the motor wants to turn as well. I used skinny plyers to hold the shaft but still could not get enought presure to stop the shaft from truning. Finally decided to have my wife hold the plyers and I tapped the auger blade with a small hammer. Success. Reinstallation was simple enought.
One important key: You are not done. Once it is all reinstalled, be sure empty out the ice bin, dry all the parts as best you can, and activate the dispenser every 15 min or so for the first hour. Otherwise it will freeze up and you will think it is broken again.

First I removed the Ice bin, I then loosened the ice bin rail under the ice maker and removed the screw that attached the bottom of the ice maker to the side of the fridge. I unplugged the power to Ice Maker from the back of the fridge and unscreewed the two screws that secured the ice maker to the fridge. This allowed the Ice Maker to be removed from the fridge. To replace the new ice maker I simply repeated the steps in reverse.

First I removed the cardboard cover, which was held in place by 7 screws. Actually first I unplugged the fridge, next using a nut driver I removed the 3 screws holding the supports to the motor. The motor with fan just pulls right out. Next was to disconnect the wire harness or plug, which required squeezing together the plastic plug and moving it side to side while gently pulling.
With motor in hand using a pair of pliers remove the poor excuse for a nut of the fan motor shaft holding on the fan. Slide the fan off the shaft -note direction of blades!!!! Using a nut driver remove 2 srews holding on the plastic motor support . This slides right off the back. To assemble follow the reverse . Just check to see that the fan spins freely before plugging back in your fridge.

We have a Reverse Osmosis water filter supplying the fridge, so the internal water filter only served to reduce the water pressure inside the unit. I installed the bypass plug by simply twisting and removing the internal water filter and then twisting the plug up into the same hole. Done in 5 min.
Longest part of this was clearing the top shelf to reach back there... Oh, and figuring out that this part exists and that it could help with the problems we were having with the unit. The water filter is relatively new, less than six months, but it still contributed to the problem enough to cause the failure.
[Thank you Partselect.com for having this web database set up that gets EXACTLY the right part!].

Now about the hollow cubes: Do a web search and you'll find a lot of discussion about it. This is specific to the Whirlpool (Maytag, and others) newer style front to back icemakers that create "half moon" shaped icecubes. For a Shop Manual to a web search for 4316835.pdf for this series.
No doubt my old unit's icemaker solenoid valve on the back isn't passing as much pressure as it did new, but by itself it isn't fatal just yet. You can tell if you are vulnerable to this if the water spigot on the front only delivers a very slow trickle of water; if it takes a l o n g t i m e to fill a glass.

But here is the rest of the story: There is a fundamental design flaw in the way the icemaker unit was created that makes it malfuntion if the water pressure is too low - they chose to put the thermocouple (TC) that senses the temperature of the freezing cube on the opposite end (front) of the water tray from the water fill tube which fills from the rear. This was probably a manufacturing trade off for simplicity of assembly and it saved them half a cent's worth of copper wiring and a couple of screws. And maybe a safty concern about wiring under an open water channel, but that is a lousy excuse; there are other solutions, and the power "harness" goes right by there within a couple of inches anyway...

There are a number of reasons for low pressure:
- Bad supply inlet valve, or not open all the way, crimped tubing
- Bad Frige icemaker solenoid valve
- Clogged internal water filter (even just a little)
- Frozen ice plug in the fill tube, in the very back top of the unit against the back (use a hair dryer to defrost)
- Etc. Do some more web research for more details.
Of course the icemaker timers do fail as well, so this discussion assumes the icemaker is still functioning as "normally" as it can, given its design limitations.

The interaction with water pressure (design flaw!) is this: if the unit doesn't get enough water due to low pressure, then the final cube position to fill doesn't get any water in it (the front one by the motor). This is the one that the TC is next to as well, so it cools of really quickly and the TC thinks the tray is completely frozen, when in fact it isn't. The TC fires the cycling motor which turns on the heater and then spins the ejector shaft which has tabs that push the half moon shaped cubes around and out. However, since the cubes weren't fully frozen, only their outer shell gets pushed out - the water in the middle drains out leaving a hollow cube set. That liquid water hits the cold ejector bars and some of it immediately freezes, making little stalactite fingers that catch on the tabs and side of the tray, thus jamming the ejector shaft and pausing the cycle in place indefinitely.
The net is that you get a few hollow cubes and then no more ice until you reach in and crack off the ice fingers so shaft tabs can pass and the motor can finsh the cycle and properly stop in its home position. You can also tell by checking whether the front cube location has water in it just after it fills by reaching around and dipping your finger in it. If it comes up dry, then you have this problem.
So, in my case, putting the bypass plug in increased my flow t

Philips head screwdriver and ten minutes was all it took! I removed the two screws that hold the icemaker assembly in place, then pulled it out a little and disconnected the electrical plug freeing the icemaker assembly. Then I snapped the external parts off my old icemaker assembly and snapped them on the new icemaker assembly. Installing the new icemaker assembly was just as fast and easy. I snapped the electrical plug into the new icemaker assembly, then screwed in the two screws. It was making ice shortly thereafter. Glob free ice! I'm glad I didn't call a repairman. I probably saved a hundred bucks. A ten year old could accomplish this simple and easy task. No wonder the Maytag repairman has time on his hands.

Found the problem to be a broken plastic housing supporting the auger motor — which also acts as the ice bucket shelf

I purchased a new housing/shelf and went about changing it out.

1. Lift the arm that shuts the ice-maker off.

2. Remove the ice bin. I transferred the ice to a pan
and sat it in the lower areas of the freezer.

3. Remove the screw that secures the shelf to the
left side ot the freezer. It's located on the bottom
left side of the shelf. I used a socket driver for
this.

4. Simultaneously from both the back and front of
the shelf, lift the shelf up to clear the round
supports on both sides of the freezer
compartment and then begin to pull it towards
the front of the freezer. When the back of the
shelf clears the rear round supports, let the rear
part of the shelf drop down.

5. Reach to the back left and squeeze the top and
bottom of the wiring clip, which releases it from
the back refrigerator wall. Pull it towards you as
you do this. The shelf is now totally clear to pull
out the front of the freezer.

6. Close the freezer door to protect the contents.

7. Remove the auger yoke from the motor shaft at
the front of the housing enclosure. If you have
any problems, this is the place. To begin with,
you need to know that the yoke is left-hand
threaded. Personally, I found it very difficult to
remove. I pursued another path that was not at
all helpful, so I will omit it here, but forget about
anything involving disassembly of the motor.
What you have going for you is that the motor
does not turn well from this end of the device
because of gearing. Use something long (for
leverage) screwdriver or similar item that you
can pass between the forks of the yoke and pry
it off moving it in a clockwise direction (when
viewed from the front).

8. From the rear of the housing, make note of the
configuration of the electrical connections before
proceeding. Then remove the 4 screws holding
the motor. I used a cordless drill with a phillips-
head bit in it. I left 2 screws almost loose, but not
quite, so I could remove them by hand and hold
the motor and housing at the same time.

9. ) In a similar manner remove the 4 screws
holding the solenoid and the 3 parts that it
operates. Note closely the arrangement of the
parts before removal.

10. Reinstall the motor and solenoid items in a new
shelf/housing combo and reinstall by following
these instructions in reverse order.