Sorry, I accidentally posted this as a reply to another thread, however, I actually meant it to stand by itself. So here it is again, sort of.
My 15 year old Kitchen Aid refrigerator slowly stopped. This unit has been trouble from day one. In 2000 it was a new compressor, twice .... the 1st new one quit after a week or 2. Anyway, it has been ok until last week. I first noticed the refrigerator side was not cooling enough .... then I noticed the ice cream in the freezer was a little softer than usual. And finally, the ice cubes started getting clearer. The 1st observation was that there was no air flow from the freezer side to the frig .... none! However, I did clean the condenser coils because, from past experience, this thing will slow down with only a minor amount of dirt on the coils. Anyway, the whole thing eventually got warm, so it was shut off and the food transferred to the other freezer, neighbor's frig and to the RV frig,which happened to be on the driveway instead of the paid-for storage place.
The authorized KA service guy came out today and said, "Oh, you should have left it on!" I shut it off because I didn't want to be blamed for "breaking" it. And, if that's the case, their person on the phone should have told me so. Ok, off my soapbox. So, he said it would be $1500 to put in a new compressor and evaporator. BTW, we priced new KA built-ins for about $4K-5K. Anyway, I turned it on and low and behold, there is now airflow to the fridge. I left it run since this morning and it is now working, fridge at
39 degrees and freezer at 5 degrees. Anyone have any ideas of what could have happened? I would think that maybe the cool air fan might have stopped, however, in the freezer, it seemed to be moving air. Keep in mind, the freezer eventually didn't work either. So, I'm baffled! Actually, after some additional thought, could it be that the evaporator is icing? Maybe the defrost heater is bad or is not activating?