A tech here in the Appliantology forums was flummoxed by this GE dishwasher. The machine showed no signs of life of any kind, even though there was power making it to the main control. No lights, no response from the UI, and certainly no cycles that could be run.
At a loss for anything else to do, the tech changed both the main control and the UI board. After hooking everything back up... still nothing.
Uh oh. What do we do now? And what might the tech have done differently in his trou
There's a tech in the forums here at Appliantology who got sent on a wild goose chase when working on an Electrolux dryer, and it highlights both a major flaw in this machine's documentation and an important point for our own troubleshooting.
The dryer would only run for a few seconds, and then shut off. When he checked for error codes, the tech got an E53 code. The tech sheet says this about that code:
Some interesting phrasing there! That English doesn't seem very "congruent" t
Brother @Rhubarb Tau posted a fun one for us in the Tech forums. The initial problem was that the machine wouldn't run a cycle. In Rhubarb's words:
Strangely, there were no errors stored in the control's memory. Our tech simply had to do some more investigating, and what he found was strange...
Now that is weird. Why would Whirlpool program this machine such that it refuses to run at all when the inlet thermistor circuit is open is beyond me. But now the question becomes: what's th
A tech here at Appliantology encountered a Whirlpool refrigerator with a damper that would not stop opening and closing, causing the fresh food section to get too cold. What could cause this kind of possessed behavior, and how do we troubleshoot this?
As always, we start with the schematic.
That "minotaur" board is the main control board, and the "air baffle" is what they're calling the damper.
There are four lines going to the air baffle -- let's take a look at what those a
A tech here in the Appliantology forums encountered an odd issue with a gas dryer: whenever the unit called for heat, a loud buzzing noise would come from the gas valve until ignition, at which point it stops. Other than that, everything works fine.
Here, see it for yourself:
20250911_154840.mp4.080e2b06a7932d38c6cfd66e558dfd3a.mp4
Here's the backstory:
Once on the job, here's what he did:
So replacing just the valve coils didn't cut it!
However, he didn
The device that a customer operates when they turn the knob for an electric cooktop element is called an infinite switch. Fancy name -- does it mean that they're mysterious, high-tech components? Well, let's get into how they work so you can see for yourself.
Infinite Switch Diagram
Here's a diagram that shows, as simply as possible, the inner workings of an infinite switch electrically.
Focus on the switches S1, S2, and S3.
S2 and S3 are switches that close as soon as
A while back, we encountered a Whirlpool refrigerator with an inop evaporator fan. Rather than take apart the freezer to get right to the fan for testing, we did the smart thing by undoing a couple of clips and doing our testing right from the control board.
The first thing we wanted to figure out was if the evaporator fan was getting a good power supply. So before we even do any tests, let's figure out how the fan's circuit works.
This markup shows how the evaporator fan circuit
A tech here on Appliantology encountered an issue with the LED lights in a Whirlpool side-by-side refrigerator that kept flickering in both compartments. He suspected that one of the LED boards was the culprit, but he couldn't figure out how to identify which one.
Let's take a look at these LED boards on the schematic and think about how we could troubleshoot this situation.
Looks like we've got three different LED boards -- one for the freezer compartment, and two for the refrig
Let's take a look at how to troubleshoot a GE refrigerator that's not defrosting. The defrost circuit itself is simple enough, as you can see below:
That's a dead simple circuit, and an easy troubleshoot: you would just put the unit into forced defrost, then perform our electrical tests right at the control board (always use EEPs for minimal disassembly!). We want to determine if the control board is supplying voltage to the defrost circuit.
But it's when we look at the forced de
A tech here at Appliantology had an issue with a Kenmore Whirlpool dryer that kept showing the customer an AF error code. Looking up that code in the tech sheet, we see this description:
Wow, this is some fancy modern dryer! Apparently, it's equipped with an anemometer to measure the exhaust airflow so it can alert the customer about a clogged vent.
Our tech checked the vent outlet and got good airflow. So why is the dryer throwing an airflow error? Maybe that swanky airflow sens
In this forum topic, the tech was working on a dryer that shut down a few minutes into a cycle:
In addition to having trouble putting the unit into diagnostic mode, there were some other odd symptoms too:
Normally, you would suspect the thermal overload in the case of a motor shutting down shortly into a cycle. However, the other odd symptoms clued Brother igloo into the true cause:
The selector switch in this model is a little electronic variable resistor, and it's a common
There's a huge part of Appliantology that you're missing out on -- and it's holding you back from improving as a tech.
That part is our massive archive of workshop recordings! For many years now, we've been teaching on all kinds of technical topics, from electricity, to schematic reading, to troubleshooting plans, to appliance technology -- and more! We have hundreds of hours of this training available right now as part of your Appliantology membership.
As techs, we need to always keep
One of the many fine techs here at Appliantology posted his story with a Maytag washer that wouldn't spin in the Appliantology forums.
The initial situation in his words:
On top of this, there was one more strange symptom:
Given this strange behavior, he was understandably thrown on how to proceed.
After changing all those parts, no resolution! But finally, he found the issue:
Lesson learned indeed! And thank you for sharing your hard earned lesson with us. Now we a
A tech here in the Appliantology forums encountered a GE dryer that was completely dead -- no lights in the UI and no response of any kind. Here's how things went in his words:
Always a bummer when you replace an expensive part and it doesn't resolve the problem. But maybe we can triage this and figure out what could have been done to avoid the unnecessary board replacement.
Here's the schematic for this stacked dryer:
Let's focus in on the places where our tech did his tr
Some seasoned Appliantologists had a good topic in the forums where they posted some warnings for posterity about some easy-to-solve, but nonetheless tricky gotchas that you can encounter when working on laundry appliances. I figured they should be archived here so more people can keep these simple tips in mind.
First up, Brother Coley described an issue he encountered that had him scratching his head:
The root of the problem? Well...
Don't worry, Coley -- we've all been there
There are all kinds of reasons to become an appliance repair tech. The trade is profitable, in high demand, offers a good work-life balance, satisfying, practical, and all manner of other flattering adjectives. On top of all that, as I mentioned in a previous post, appliance repair is a future-proof skill -- new developments like AI don't pose a threat to a tech's career.
If you're a technically minded person who enjoys problem solving, you'll do very well in appliance repair -- this makes
It's about time I talked about this in one of these posts -- the AI revolution is upon us.
Okay, it's not quite Skynet yet, but it's still spelling disaster for a lot of different jobs.
Some are already halfway out the door, like many repetitive and administrative jobs: customer service, scheduling, and data entry, to name a few.
But they're just the start. Many other positions that are often thought of as requiring more skill and education are prime for the silicon harvest:
Let's say you get called out to fix an ice maker that has frozen over. You show up at the job, open 'er up, and this is what you see:
Another angle:
What do you think happened here? What could have caused that kind of damage to the walls of this ice box?
Let us know what you think in the comments! Or, if you're stumped, you can read the topic this scenario comes from and learn how it happened yourself.
A tech here in the Appliantology forums ran into this issue with a Viking refrigerator:
As it turns out, BrianG had the solution:
This is a known problem that they have a whole heater kit for: 016616-000. All our tech needs to do is slap that in and his days of defrosting this fridge's air ducts should be over!
A tech here in the Appliantology forums ran into a surprising customer complaint about a microwave: it's doing its job too well! They say that it's cooking food way faster and way hotter than it used to.
(The above picture is a slight dramatization.)
So, our tech took a reasonable step and measured the amps going to the microwave. After all, if the magnetron is producing more watts than expected, it will have to be drawing more amps.
Measuring Power Consumption
His meas
How do you put an ice maker that looks like this into a test harvest?
The tech sheet has this to say about starting a test:
That tracks with the old classic Whirlpool ice makers, but there's no T or H test terminals to be seen here. So what gives?
Well, it looks like there might be a test button here, if we look closely...
Turns out, that tech sheet is just outdated and flat-out wrong. You need to press this button twice within 3 seconds with a thin, pokey i
An Appliantologist in the forums ran into a bE error on an LG dishwasher, which perplexed him. In his words:
A bubble error would seem to indicate oversudsing, but our tech said that wasn't the case.
Fortunately, Brother Slav had the answer for us:
Turns out, this so-called "bubble error" can mean all kinds of problems that have nothing to do with suds, such as a leveling issue:
Or a problem with the pump:
You can check out the full list of bE error code
Are the dispenser heater and fill tube heater in series or parallel? Or perhaps they're neither?
BONUS QUESTION: If both heaters have 6.3 kohms of resistance, roughly what resistance would you expect to read from pin 1 to pin 2 of the connector?
Sound off in the comments!
A tech here in the Appliantology forums ran into a Whirlpool dual-evaporator refrigerator with a frozen fresh-food evaporator, and it caused him to ask the following question about troubleshooting it:
Sounds like a fun challenge -- let's figure out how much testing we can get done in a 30-minute service call.
The name of the game when it comes to saving time is keeping disassembly to a minimum. All of our troubleshooting techniques will either require no disassembly, or they'll
In a topic right here at Appliantology, a tech encountered a perplexing issue with an ice maker that wouldn't make ice. His diagnostics were as follows, in his words:
The E5 error code does implicate the ice maker thermistor, according to the tech sheet. So, our tech proceeded with the following repair:
And so he was left for a bit of a loss -- that is, until some helpful techs pointed him in the right direction on Appliantology.
In particular, Daniel A gave him some great ins
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