Have a 1 1/2 year old Kenmore double door refrigerator that has an ice
maker. It stopped working about 2 days ago. There is ice in the tray
and there are no obstacles blocking the infra-red "eye" when you close
the door. I put a hairdryer to the icemaker defrosting everything
(after reading posts suggesting to do this) but it didn't resolve the
issue. I guess I'm at the point where I have to remove it...does
anyone have any suggestions on what I should look for? (I'm a newbie
with electronics but am handy). Any sites with walk-through type
sites for troubleshooting?

Is water getting to it ?

Yes...the tray I was referring to that has ice in it is the one that
the cubes are made in, then it heats up and they're scooped out of it.
There's cubes ready to be "scooped" up but nothing is happening.

On 20 Apr 2005 18:26:55 -0700, wrote:

Is water getting to it ?

The other Mike wrote:

Yes...the tray I was referring to that has ice in it is the one that
the cubes are made in, then it heats up and they're scooped out of it.
There's cubes ready to be "scooped" up but nothing is happening.

Haven't seen heated release trays, but I suppose they could exist.... The ones
I've seen are either plastic half moon trays that dump, or toaster style half
moon with fingers that push the ice out.

Older ice trays tend to get a lot of mineral content built up on the tray as
they are typically tapped off the kitchen cold line which is usually not
softened water.

The mineral coating prevents the teflon (or similar) coating from working,
making the ice stick to the tray hard enough that the fingers can't lift it.

You can test this by using a hairdryer to melt the ice and seeing if the fingers
move. Spraying PAM on the tray is another test, but won't work more than one or
two cycles (and do you really want to eat ice with PAM?).