Refrigerator Not Cooling - How to Fix - What to Check [2020]

0:00 as always the actual repair isn't that hard it's the diagnosis that's the real hard part figuring out what thing it is you have to check those four things um i knew there was something wrong with the the compressor and it's that starter relay wasn't allowing it to stay on so i bought the new start relay everything's fixed there it's starting [Music] and then it turns off so yesterday i was walking in front of our refrigerator and i noticed a puddle in front of the freezer door i opened it up and sure enough everything in there was looked like it was thawing out the ice was melting which is where the water was coming from it wasn't broken it was just not warm it was cool we have a little thermometer in there

0:46 and it was around 50 degrees so it was working but it wasn't uh working correctly the lights were working the fan seemed to be working everything was on but it wasn't fully working so here's the four things i checked and how i fix the problem and before i begin for all these repairs the only things i used were a multimeter also called a volt meter and a quarter inch socket driver you can also use just a straight screwdriver so the first thing you should check and it's the easiest thing to check is dust on the coil and you can either get to it by removing uh this guard on the front and trying to vacuum it out for the front or you can get to it by pulling the refrigerator out and getting to the coil from the back

1:31 which is where it's located so i pulled the refrigerator out and i got behind it and i took off this cardboard cover on the bottom and it's held on with just these four little screws and right behind it there's a metal coil it kind of looks like a radiator it's just a series of metal tubes and there was dust on it and i vacuumed all that off with the little vacuum extension but it wasn't terribly bad and i knew that wasn't the problem but that's always the first and easiest thing to check that that coil is covered in dust and not working the right way now the second thing i checked is making sure all the fans work there's a fan that blows over that coil and that was spinning there's also a fan inside here that blows the cold air through the refrigerator and i could hear up at the top

2:16 up here on the back that was also working so that's the check number two and those two things were working fine now the third thing is actually inside of the freezer and to get to it you have to open the freezer and take out all the shelves so for this third fix it's actually right back here on this back panel and again same quarter inch driver or a straight flat screwdriver you take off one two three four of those little uh screws and you take off these shelves and you take that plate off and inside is something that looks exactly like a radiator it's metal and that is what transfers the cold air you could have a problem if that freezes up if that freezes solid

3:02 it's not doing its job and that would be an issue with a heat exchanger so there's a defroster on the bottom it gets cold but it instead of freezing over it melts all that uh ice away so it still can circulate the air that could be another problem you can just visually check it i took mine off everything looked fine it wasn't frozen over everything was working fine there so i went to uh fix number four which turned out to be the problem now when i said in the beginning that everything seemed to be working it turned out obviously something wasn't working right the fans the light everything seemed to be it sounded normal except the compressor you'll hear you know every few seconds uh your refrigerator's compressor will turn on it'll sound you hear kind of air going into a tank usually

3:47 that turns on as long as it needs that cold air and then it will turn off well mine it would turn on for five seconds and then i would hear tick and it would turn off it would wait a few minutes it would tick to turn on and tick to turn off it would only stay on for five seconds so that's not an issue with the compressor it's an issue with what's giving power to the compressor and i'll show you what those things are so let me show you the actual problem that i had where it turned on and turned off you can hear it click and i'll show you where this part is located on the back at the bottom uh connected to the compressor so here i am behind the refrigerator with the old capacitor and start relay and i'm gonna try to recreate the the

4:32 condenser turning on for five seconds hearing a pop and then turning it off so here we go so there's the fan running starting uh there it's starting [Music] and then it turns off so that's how i know it's one of those two things the capacitor or the relay so time to take them out and test them so you could hear that tick that comes on for five seconds and ticks off it's not kicking on the capacitor gives it a boost of energy 250 volts it says on here and that's what gives that compressor a

5:18 boost to tick on that wasn't working but i checked the capacitor and this was working fine so i'll show you how i do that with a multimeter in a second this part is the start relays so this plugs into the compressor on this end and the capacitor plugs in on this end and power comes in up here this turned out to be the the bad part now some people said you can check it by shaking it and if you hear a rattling noise that only works with different types of start relays there's multiple types that could be a problem you can also check it with the multimeter but the the big clue is you hear that tick that tick where the compressor should turn on and it doesn't then it's the start relay so let me show you how i test this and how i test the capacitor so you can know which one is wrong and which part you

6:05 need to order so here is the capacitor and start relay that was on the back of my fridge and again mine kind of plugs in like that that's how it was and that's where it plugged into the compressor on the refrigerator and that's where the cord came in this pulls out now i took this all apart and when i looked in here there was a bunch of goop and uh stuff that had leaked on here something leaked out of the fridge and got onto this board and shorted this out you can see burn marks and there was all sorts of gunk in here and that's one of the reasons why i knew this was the bad part you can see it's burned back here and up here i tried cleaning it off and reusing it it didn't work

6:50 the capacitor i think is still good it says uh 250 volt right on here and it's 15 microfarads now i have a basic multimeter it does not read microfarads but you can test this by putting it to the the 2 million which is just above 200k and you can see that it slowly climbs it's slowly taking a charge and if i rotate these two it will slowly go down so just visually looking at it nothing is bulged out on here nothing is really wrong and i think this is okay so this part

7:36 on amazon is fifty dollars this is a fifty dollar part on amazon this part is twenty two dollars it varies based on what model you have you can get some that are together for certain models that are only around 20 bucks but for my refrigerator my model this was 50 and this was 22. so all i ordered was this part here this start capacitor if this doesn't do the job i will get this just to check it as well but for now i'm just getting the part that i'm pretty sure is broken now to check if this part is bad the start capacitor here let me put it back together so you can check so you can check it for continuity

8:22 and that is turning it to this dial here you will need another wire here to join these two terminals where the what cord plugs into but i'm going to put it on this bottom and this right side and then i will try to bridge these two terminals here and you should have continuity there on the multimeter which i am getting now you can check it from the bottom one and the one on the left which i'm also getting and then you can check the two on the

9:09 top which the two on the top i believe should work just as they are you don't need to connect this and this was not working there you can see again this is all burned and something got in here and leaked on here and if i remove it you can see it's burned on the back of the circuit board so that's kind of how i knew this was the bad part also the five second and the big tick showed that this was the bad part and it might be this here or the circuit board that's what was wrong so that's why i needed to order this 50 part but i believe this capacitor is still good and you can see here it says 15 microfarads and 250

9:55 volts that's the part number that i needed for this one the part number was that number right there two four one nine four one zero zero three this was part number two nine seven two eight six eight o three okay well it only took three days for the fifty dollar starter relay to arrive and again i'll put the link down in the description for the part you need and the more eagle-eyed viewer might notice that this is no longer in our kitchen it's in the garage my wife said i don't care if you fix it we're getting a new one so i'm still gonna fix it because i have the part and it should be just as simple as plugging in the capacitor plugging this into the compressor and

10:40 hopefully it turns on and here we are in the back of the fridge uh again the capacitor plugs in through here and into these two slots just like that it clicks in and then this plug gets attached right here that just pushes in like that and then these three plugs plug into the compressor which is a little bit tricky because there's not a lot of room to get your hand back in there

11:26 and this is the bottom of this is the bottom plug so the white goes on the bottom it just presses in kind of wiggle it a little bit and the last part is putting this wire on and this was a tricky thing to get [Applause] it just clips in and now we're ready to

12:12 uh give it a test run time to plug it in see how it works [Music] i hear three beeps and the compressed compressor started right up okay so i think i fixed it immediately started up the compressor before i had to plug it in and wait a few minutes for

12:57 it to turn on but this time i heard it start right up immediately and it's still running and when i check in the freezer i'm definitely feeling cold air coming out of here it's not just the fan so up here as well there's definite cold air blowing in immediately so it seems like the decision i made just to order that start relay was the right one it fired right up and it's blowing cold air out it seems like it did the fix um had i tested that capacitor and that was also broken i might have ordered just that or to be safe you can order both but i'll put uh links for the parts down in the description i hope this helps i hope you're able to fix a refrigerator as always the actual repair isn't that

13:44 hard you're pulling a plug out putting a new part in it's the diagnosis that's the real hard part figuring out what thing it is you have to check those four things um i knew there was something wrong with the the compressor and it's that starter relay wasn't allowing it to stay on so i bought the new uh start relay everything's fixed so i hope this helps thanks

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