If you've heard me rant on this before,
please ignore. KA authorized service
stinks. Maybe some of their service
companies are good, but I have the one's
I've dealt with, are not. My KA service
guy walked in, complained that I had
shut down the fridge (no one at their
place told me to keep it running) and said
that, "well, it's been 5 years since you
replaced the compressor/condenser, so
it would be $1500 to do it." That's it,
no diagnostic, no listening to me, just
replace everything. As it turns out the
fridge now works fine. When the KA
service guy turned it on, I noticed that
there was now airflow to the fridge.
Before,
there was none .... zero. I told him
that. I also told him that when I shut
it down
after it not working properly, there was
lots of water in the bottom of the freezer.
Still, just replace it all. After he
left, the fridge and freezer worked
perfectly. I
still don't trust it. Shortly after
that we were out of town for 5 weeks, so
I put
the fridge stuff in a dorm fridge and
the freezer stuff in the garage freezer.

But, in looking into what would cause a
freeze up, there seems
to be only 2 things, bad defrosting or
low freon. I guessed the former. In my
KA built-in, there are 3 components in
the defrost area, a heater, a timer and
a thermostat. The timer turns on the
heater and turn off the compressor at
regular defrost intervals. The
thermostat will turn off the heater as
soon as the
coil gets above 32 degrees (or there
about). The guess for mine is that the
mechanical timer hung up or the
thermostat stuck, preventing the heater
from
defrosting the evaporator coil. These
components are located behind the rear
freezer panel on my KA. After removing
a ton of screws, the panel comes out
exposing the coil, heater, thermostat
and timer.

nohorns wrote:
I have a side by side, about 5 yrs old. The defrost cycle isn't working,
and it freezes up after about 5 days. Kitchen Aid told me it was a closed
system, and only a qualified KA repairman can fix it. I've heard there is
a "defrost clock." Does anyone know what could be the problem, and if I
can fix it myself?