janedoecooks
Premium Member
- Model Number
- TFX20JR
- Brand
- GE
- Age
- More than 10 years
Hello and thank you for being here to help us DIY'ers. 
I'm having continuous troubles with this unit. So, I will give a little history on how this started.
First problem, the unit would not cool and frost built up in the freezer. I pulled it out to clean coils and discovered where the mice had been taking pieces of cat food and storing, they left a huge mess in there. The fan, although working, was plugged up pretty bad with dirt/dust, so I cleaned that off too. I cleaned it out and cleaned up the coils as best I could, let the unit defrost (I thought) and plugged it back in. It ran great for about a month, then the same thing happened.
I pulled it out again, this time taking an air hose under and over the coils and a major amount of built up dust/dirt/dander came out of it. This time I had read how long it takes to defrost if the frost gets built up behind the freezer back wall, so I let it totally defrost until I saw no water dripping at all on the bottom of the wall piece. I plugged it in and it worked fine again, for about a month.
Last night, the refrigerator stopped cooling. I checked the ice cubes in the tray and they were watery feeling so I knew it was about to stop again.
I moved it out and waited until this morning to work on it, and somewhere during the night it began working again. Can I say LOL here?
So, this morning the fans are working and compressor is working but I knew there was frost built up in there and that had to be removed. While I was getting tools, the whole thing shut down. No fans...no compressor. (Is that normal to have no fans running anywhere even though that freezer door had been opened quite awhile?)
I removed the panel and there was major frost build up. Set a fan in front of it and allowed every ounce of it to melt away.
Plugged it in. Nothing. No fans, no compressor. I turned the temp dial all the way to off, then back up again, closed the doors and nothing came on.
While I was registering here, funny thing happened. The thing kicked on. That was about twenty minutes it took, and there was no cool air inside there at all due to how long it took to melt the frost.
So...do I still have a problem? Is it normal to take that long to kick on the fans/compressor even though there is no cool air existing in it? Seems the thermostat would know the temps were way too high and kick that on immediately.
Is it possible that some of the frost build up from last time it went down was still there and slowly kept building back up causing it to not work properly?
I have a condenser coil cleaning brush coming in a couple days, I'm going to leave it out and thoroughly clean those coils again.
If there are any other suggestions on what could be happening here, I would be truly grateful.
I'm befuddled here.
I'm having continuous troubles with this unit. So, I will give a little history on how this started.
First problem, the unit would not cool and frost built up in the freezer. I pulled it out to clean coils and discovered where the mice had been taking pieces of cat food and storing, they left a huge mess in there. The fan, although working, was plugged up pretty bad with dirt/dust, so I cleaned that off too. I cleaned it out and cleaned up the coils as best I could, let the unit defrost (I thought) and plugged it back in. It ran great for about a month, then the same thing happened.
I pulled it out again, this time taking an air hose under and over the coils and a major amount of built up dust/dirt/dander came out of it. This time I had read how long it takes to defrost if the frost gets built up behind the freezer back wall, so I let it totally defrost until I saw no water dripping at all on the bottom of the wall piece. I plugged it in and it worked fine again, for about a month.
Last night, the refrigerator stopped cooling. I checked the ice cubes in the tray and they were watery feeling so I knew it was about to stop again.
I moved it out and waited until this morning to work on it, and somewhere during the night it began working again. Can I say LOL here?
So, this morning the fans are working and compressor is working but I knew there was frost built up in there and that had to be removed. While I was getting tools, the whole thing shut down. No fans...no compressor. (Is that normal to have no fans running anywhere even though that freezer door had been opened quite awhile?)
I removed the panel and there was major frost build up. Set a fan in front of it and allowed every ounce of it to melt away.
Plugged it in. Nothing. No fans, no compressor. I turned the temp dial all the way to off, then back up again, closed the doors and nothing came on.
While I was registering here, funny thing happened. The thing kicked on. That was about twenty minutes it took, and there was no cool air inside there at all due to how long it took to melt the frost.
So...do I still have a problem? Is it normal to take that long to kick on the fans/compressor even though there is no cool air existing in it? Seems the thermostat would know the temps were way too high and kick that on immediately.
Is it possible that some of the frost build up from last time it went down was still there and slowly kept building back up causing it to not work properly?
I have a condenser coil cleaning brush coming in a couple days, I'm going to leave it out and thoroughly clean those coils again.
If there are any other suggestions on what could be happening here, I would be truly grateful.
I'm befuddled here.