APM6855 - yes, that old Fridge not cooling problem .........

[Rollerball]

My APM6855 has been playing up for years with the usual problem, ie fridge not cooling ('fixed' by defrosting the unit the 48 hours). It has been increasing in frequency and now fails about once every two or three weeks.

It's just failed again and I thought I would remove the inside back of the freezer compartment when the fridge has just started to warm up to see what might be going on.

First, the fan has NOT frozen up, there's no icing on it or it's mechanism and it rotates quite happily (I can hear it when the door is shut and see it spinning down when I open the freezer door - it won't of course spin with the freezer door open as it's not supposed to). As the fan is okay I haven't photographed it.

I've taken a couple of pictures of the inside of the freezer area when the problem has occurred (with the panels removed of course!).

First, here's a close-up of the top of the area:

http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g319/Dalek99999/Closeupontoparea.jpg

and a picture of the whole of the freezer area:

http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g319/Dalek99999/wholearea.jpg

Can the polystyrene block be pulled out, or not until the ice has defrosted? It's currently rock solid with ice behind the block (I can tell this as looking under the gap at the bottom I can see the ice at the bottom of the metal 'matrix').

Once ithe polystyrene has been removed, should there be anything to stop me from measuring the resistance of the heating element to at least check if that okay?

Thanks

 

[Rollerball]

No-one?

 

[Steve]

Leave the polystyrene until its defrosted fully.

Then as you say, measure the resistance of the heater. Not sure what it should be. Someone will be along to help im sure.

 

[Rollerball]

Thanks. Now where are the 'ends' of the heater?

 

[JohnD]

you say it's the Fridge part that is not cooling?

Not the Freezer part?

 

[Rollerball]

Correct. It's the old problem with this model that the fridge stops cooling, only resolved by turning everything off and thoroughly defrosting the whole unit. In my case what's happening is that the metal construction behind the polystyrene block is icing up solid within a couple of weeks, which I've been told is probably (but not definitely) down to a bad control panel PCB (no doubt a 50p part on it has failed).