Stormin Mormon wrote:

No cap. Evaporator motors, I've never seen a cap.

I just wanted to follow up in case it can be of help to someone.

In fact despite the fact that this refrigerator (about a dozen years old)
has no electronic controls there *is* actually a bit of circuitry with
the evaporator motor. If I had to guess I'd say that maybe they drive
the actual motor at a higher frequency to go faster while retaining the
general simplicity of an induction motor.

It could be that the circuitry rather than the motor itself was the
failure point since it sure didn't seem like the bearings were bad and
there really isn't much else to the motor...just the one coil. On the
old motor I could stop it easily by grasping the shaft with my fingers
and while you can do that on the new one the difference is that the old
one could stay stopped when you let go and sometimes needs a push to get
going again. It does spin freely and did even while cold so the drive
circuit could be the issue.

Now that it's out I'll play with it and see what freq is going to the
motor coil. The label says it's supposed to turn at 2600 RPM. My strobe
says more like 2500 but either way that's not the 60 Hz multiple I would
expect of a directly driven motor.

As for the repair, it was far more complex than it needed to be thanks to
GE's design. While everything comes apart and unplugs nicely the fact
that the entire evap coil assembly is clipped to and is held by the
plastic bracket that holds the fan motor is, IMHO, ridiculous. I suppose
a pro might not worry about it and just let it hang of its own accord but
I could not take a chance like that so after all the other covers and
shelf rails etc. were out I got some bailing wire and tied some support
lines between holes in the evap coil frame and the shelf rail screws,
then had to struggle to get the thing that holds the motor out past them.
At least I didn't have to worry I was stressing the refrigerant lines.
Other than that it's pretty straightforward.

It's all back together now and temp is coming down nicely. I won't know
if the actual problem (too warm on the fridge side) is actually solved
for a few days I guess. However for now as soon as the freezer temp is
back down where it should I'll resume powering the muffin fan I put on
the fridge side to pull more cold air in. Once the fridge temp is down
where it should be I'll pull the supplemental fan out and we shall see if
the new fan motor on the freezer side has cured the problem.