Our 8 year old Maytag MSD2356AEB refrigerator had only been dispensing cubes for a while so I finally decided to try and fix that. Found ice jaming the crusher mechanism so I cleared that. Now it only dispensed crushed ice, regardless of whether the button for crushed or cubes was pressed.

The ice crusher/cube mechanism is actuated by a lever arm hooked to a solenoid at the back of the freezer. The solenoid appeard to be siezed so I ordered a new solenoid and replaced that today.

STILL NO CHANGE - ARGGGGG!

The new solenoid does not appear to ever energize. I observed it with the door open (but door shut switch depressed) while pressing the cube and crushed ice buttons (and also pressing the dispense lever). Solenoid did nothing.

All the button lights on the control panel work normally and the water dispenser, ice dispensing and flapper/door mechanisms work fine.

What could be the problem?

Thanks --Jayhawk

Sounds like you need to be tracing back from the coil to see where you have lost the voltage to the coil....could be a cut wire, bad switch or disp board, whatever is in your unit...

Thanks for the reply, Pegi.

By "coil" do you mean the solenoid?

And by tracing, I take it to mean voltmeters and probes and such. But the solenoid appears to be 115v, and I'm a little nervous about probing parts with those voltages and currents inside a damp freezer section ....:-)

Plus, I'm not sure the rare desire for crushed ice (I've blocked up the lever to the cubed ice position) is worth the effort of trying to trace that down. Especially if its a costly part (like the control panel) that otherwise is working fine.

But if anyone has had, and solved, the same problem, that would be useful to giving me a starting point.

Thanks! --jayhawk