Ice maker not working...

[V]

Hello,

I have a Whirlpool side by side with water and ice. One of the things the tell you to check is the pump. The water dispenser works fine so I was wondering if someone could tell me if the the ice maker and water dispenser use the same pump?

Thanks in advance, V

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Pump? There is a big pump down at the water department so, yes, they do use the same one.

Check out

or for some troubleshooting ideas. Ice makers are the most frequent repair on refrigerators, but I sure like having one. They are easy to replace if that is what you need. Be sure the lever is in proper position. There is a heater, a small motor, a fill valve. Sometimes the fill tube get frozen and just needs to be thawed and cleaned out and it will start up OK.

[Wayne Boatwright]

On Mon 06 Oct 2008 07:31:47p, Edwin Pawlowski told us...

Ed, I totally agree. And, I have never failed to have some kind of problem with side-by-side units with ice-thru-the-door and water dispensers, whereas I have absolutely never had a problem with an ice maker in a top freezer model which just has an ice bin. I've never figured out the correlation of problems with the SBS, as opposed to none with top freezer. Obviously, there is a lot more to the delivery mechanism in the SBS, but the unit which produces the ice in both is virtually identical, yet the problem was always with the ice maker itself, not the delivery system.

[Noahbuddy]

Just buy some ice cube trays. Ice makers are too much trouble.

[gfretwell]

I suspect it has to do with the hole in the door letting in heat and moisture that build up ice in the mechanism and break it.

I have had a few rounds with Whirlpool icemakers recently and this guy has the best site to figure out what is going on

All of mine were fixed with a motor plate assembly (the brown plastic thing under the white square cover (4 screws and slip out the wire bail)

[Jim Elbrecht]

-snip-

Since that's so common and so easy to fix- it is where I would start. Unplug the frig- thaw for a few hours and try again.

If that fails, a universal ice maker is cheap enough. [$70-100]

Jim

[Wayne Boatwright]

On Mon 06 Oct 2008 11:06:05p, told us...

You could very well be right about that.

In three previous homes we've had a Frigidaire, Amana, and Whirlpool side- by-sides, and the only reason we chose SBS's was because of filling up the much wider space allocated for the fridge. Each of those had ice-maker problems.

Our present fridge is a Whirlpool top-freezer model, and while it is only two years old, we have never once had any type of problem with the ice maker.

Thanks for the link!

Yes, it's an easy fix. At least they made it convenient. :-)

[Pete C.]

My SBS GE Profile Arctica is 7 or 8 years old and has never had an ice maker problem. I use the ice dispenser fairly frequently here in TX too.

[Wayne Boatwright]

On Tue 07 Oct 2008 07:11:34a, Pete C. told us...

Maybe you got lucky, Pete. :-)

[Edwin Pawlowski]

I got 10 fromthe first one, five from the next.