Jonathan wrote in message . ..
(N. Thornton) wrote:

Either:
1. your air circulation fan has failed, which is most often the
problem,
2. or the defrost cycle timer has gone,
3. or defrost heater.
in that order.

snip
OK. One q tho: why's 2 unlikely?

If the timer is on a PC board there is nothing mechanical to break,
and the rest of the circuit is working fine - correct me if I'm wrong?

Well, I wouldnt assume either of those things. Your defrost timer
cuold still be mech or tronic, and theyre usually mech. Secondly, even
if its tronic it would probably use a relay to do the switching, and
its the switching contacts that are the weakest link with mech timers.
So I'd still want to know about the timer myself.

If you wire a light bulb onto the defrost element and leave it powered
daytime only, it'll let you know when it switches to defrost. Its an
easy method, just dont leave it in such a way that someone could get
fried.

Good idea!

So now I've found not only is the timer working (at least sometimes),
so are both of the defrost elements. So I'm now thinking dodgy
connections or blocked drain. Plan is to use a bit of vaseline on the
connections and waggle around a bit with a pipe cleaner.

I wouldnt put that on heater element connections myself.


Regards, NT