Frost Is Bad: my KBFS25EWMS5 experience

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Model Number: KBFS25EWMS5
Brand: KitchenAid
Age: 1-5 years

We have a KitchenAid fridge. I'm not impressed, but that's a story for another day. I signed up here in the hopes of helping the next poor devil who has the same problem I had.

Background: The freezer door is not exactly a securely closing object. We've frequently found it ever so slightly ajar, with the attendant hoar frost on everything in the freezer + solid block where there used to be ice cubes. The last time it happened, just a week ago, the ice maker stopped working the next day. I figured that the frost monster had invaded the ice maker and got a new one.

No love! And no ice. So I pulled the unit out of the wall, which is a MAJOR PITA in my house -- also a story for another day. I found nothing obvious. I did lots of googling, tried the various tests, checked the various voltages. The voltages were weird but not anything I'd seen online. I was all ready to throw a water control valve at the stupid box when fate intervened. There was a problem with the order which delayed its completion. In the meantime I gave some thought to the events surrounding the problem and started focusing on the door switch. I pulled it out and tested it. It also had some weird values, ohms this time. So I spent a little time with a heat gun to see if they would change -- perhaps the frost beastie had invaded the switch too. The ohms were still weird, so I plugged it back in and ordered a new one.

Lo and behold, the ice maker started working. I'm still going to put the new one in, but in the meantime, hurrah!

Moral of story: first check stuff that got covered in hoar frost when the freezer door failed to close.

 

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The new switch came today. I put the multimeter on it and sure enough it read like I would expect it to; the normally open contact was OPEN-open, not reading some weird ohms, and the normally closed contact was closed -- vice versa when the switch lever was depressed. So I popped it in and proceeded to perform microsurgery on the old one. It came apart surprisingly easily (and went back together too, in other words they're kinda serviceable). There was some black goo in there, dielectric perhaps or something to suppress arcing. It had mixed with water and was making a high resistance connection between the NO and NC poles. Cleaned the goo out, put it back together. Works like a champ.

So now I have a 2-year old icemaker that works perfectly well, sitting on a shelf next to the switch. I'll sell them cheap!