My 25 year old Sears Coldspot refrigerator (Whirlpool) was starting to not cool well and the temperature measured 50F degrees. The freezer worked good still.
I noticed the fan in the freezer wasn't blowing as much air as it use to. I wanted to fix it myself so I read a lot of posts here and learned that this is a common cause of the refrig being too warm problem. (I learned after all this that the refrig should be about
36F to 40F and freezer -5F to 5F.) Some post said clean and oil the fan bearings and others said to replace it because cleaning and oiling won't be good enough because the bearings are wearing out.Well, I wanted to save money so I took the fan apart and cleaned it very well and then used 3 in 1 oil. It looked like new and spun easy. The fan was turning faster than before and I thought I had fixed it. Well, the refrig was colder (about 43F) but about 2 months later the refrig was back to 50F. This time I bought a new evaporator fan (Sears $37 and it came with the blade) and I want to tell you it totally fixed the problem.
When I hooked the old and new fan up for comparison, before putting the freezer panels back on, I could not tell a lot of difference in fan speed. I was wondering if I wasted $37. But, after putting the panels back on, the increase fan speed was more apparent. This extra speed is very important. My refrig is back down to 38F and the freezer measures 0F.
Don't try cleaning the fan, the post and wed sites that say not to are correct. They aren't just trying to sell you a part.
I noticed that some people are having their evaporator fans go out after just a few years. I'm lucky my first one lasted 25 years.