A tech here on Appliantology was working on a Samsung dryer that would run for a few minutes and produce heat, but then stop and throw a heater temperature error.
Our tech immediately thought to check for the obvious thing: an out of spec thermistor.
Easy enough -- he can check it right from the board at CN1-3 to 6. But what's the spec he would be looking for? After all, a measurement is only meaningful if you have a spec to compare it to.
Well, the manual does give one spec
A tech here on Appliantology was working on a single evaporator refrigerator that was very cold in the freezer (-8 F) but warm in the fresh food compartment (~46 F), despite the fresh food being set to 34 F.
Given that this is a single evaporator refrigerator, we can immediately suspect that we have a damper which isn't opening. But that just leaves us with another question: would that be due to a problem with the damper itself, a control issue, or a sensor issue?
As with any problem,
A tech on Appliantology was exploring the heater circuit of a GE electric dryer, and he noticed something odd about the heater specs:
So we have two heaters with different heat outputs -- Heater 1 is 1600 watts, Heater 2 is 700 watts. No problem so far. But what about the amp spec? Heater 1, according to this, carries 24 amps at 240 VAC
Some of you may have alarm bells going off, but others might see nothing wrong with that combination of amperage and wattage. Here's where things
Here's another great appliance repair chronicle for you from the halls of Appliantology: a tech was called out for a Frigidaire washer that would spin, but wouldn't drain. He then made a smart move -- he hooked a cheater cord up to the drain pump, and lo and behold, it ran just fine, draining out all the water from the machine.
This already puts us on a track for our troubleshooting: something is interrupting the power supply to the drain pump. To figure out where this is happening, we need
A tech here on Appliantology posted an awesome war story where some clever troubleshooting led to a satisfying victory. This Frigidaire range had started tripping the breaker any time it was plugged in. Our tech immediately dug down to the correct starting point: the terminal block.
Huh, something already looks off... Can you spot what's wrong with this picture?
Obviously, whoever put this power cord on didn't quite understand the difference between how to hook up a 3-wire vs. a
We got a question from an inquisitive Appliantologist about a GE refrigerator -- specifically, how to test the power input to its door board.
Let's familiarize ourselves with what we're talking about.
This is a french-door bottom-mount unit, with the door board located at the top of the left-hand door, powering various loads related to the dispenser.
Identifying the power supply to this door board at first seems pretty simple -- you have three wires going right to the board
A tech here at Appliantology encountered a puzzling problem: a Samsung dryer would run normally, but then hang at the end of the cycle, with 1 minute left on the display. A strange problem, but thankfully Brothers @Bluebird and @sh2sh2 swooped in to share their own experience: in these Samsung dryers, the control board waits for the dryer to cool down before ending the cycle.
That's some info about the control board's algorithm that I couldn't find anywhere in the official documentation --
A tech here at Appliantology was stumped: he was working on an LG washer, and the machine was throwing an E6 error code. But here's the problem: the service manual for his model didn't contain any info on an E6 error code.
Normally in a situation like this, you do your best without the error code info. So what are the other symptoms the machine was showing? Well, they weren't too specific. When the tech started a cycle, the washer wouldn't fill or go into agitate. Doesn't give you a lot to
All right, a tough pop quiz for you today -- what's wrong with this picture?
Bet I've really got you scratching your head there! Okay, I'll go easy on you and give you the answer: obviously the green and white wires are disconnected.
Here's another (only slightly harder) question: where should those disconnected wires be connected to?
Turns out, all you have to do is follow the colors:
You should now also be able to easily identify the green as the ground wire, si
A tech here on Appliantology ran into a dryer that wouldn't run for longer than 5 seconds before stopping and showing a TE1 error code. Over the course of troubleshooting this issue, he and the other techs in that topic exposed some interesting things about this dryer, including some errors in the documenatation.
First off, if you look up that code, you see this:
That's some good info -- it's an outlet thermistor error. Based on the description, this seems to indicate that the th
Let's walk through some basic troubleshooting mojo on a refrigerator defrost heater circuit. Your problem statement is simple: no defrost.
Here's the circuit -- where do we start?
Really simple -- not a lot going on. Like in just about any case where you have an inop load, your first move should be to verify if you have a valid voltage supply. One way to do this would be by simply doing a voltage measurement -- ideally with a loading meter or the LoZ setting of a multimeter.
If you work on some newer washers, you'll encounter accelerometers: little circuit boards attached to the exterior of the drum. But what exactly do these accelerometers do, how do they work, and most importantly, how do we troubleshoot them?
Let's look at a GE front load washer accelerometer to get an idea of what we're talking about. We'll use this specific example to explain the technology in general.
A little blurry, but there's our accelerometer. As you can see, it's just a l
A tech here at Appliantology was working on an old-skool dryer with a mechanical timer, and he was confused by the voltage readings he got across the timer and one of its contacts. Here's the measurement he took while the dryer was running an auto dry cycle:
With the leads in this configuration, as the cycle progressed, he saw his reading flip back and forth between 0 volts and 240 volts every few minutes.
240 volts to a timer motor? Is that right? And why the fluctuation?
Error codes are almost always useful to retrieve when you're troubleshooting a computer-controlled appliance, but some are easier to read than others. Sometimes, you have to do a bit of work to decipher what the appliance is saying.
That's the case with this Maytag washer. When you look at the list of error codes, they look like pretty normal two-part codes: F followed by a number, then E followed by another number.
However, this machine doesn't have a segmented LED display. Inst
An enterprising Appliantologist was working on a Whirlpool dishwasher with poor wash results, and when he opened up the machine to take a look inside, he saw this:
That's a lot of buildup on that heater! Seems like it indicates that the problem is with the heater. However, our tech noticed that the heater was getting hot enough to make water sizzle when splashed on it, so it was operating at least to some degree.
Additionally, our tech took an amp reading on the heater's circuit
Let's say you're working on a Samsung washer that won't power on at all, and you run into an unexpected troubleshooting roadblock: it seems like the schematic and the pinout don't line up. How do you deal with a situation like this? Let's take things step-by-step and see if we can't figure it out.
For an unresponsive appliance like this, you would first want to make sure the main control is getting power. Any control board needs its own unswitched Line and Neutral power supply. Usually, the
A tech here in the Appliantology forums ran into a puzzling issue with a Whirlpool gas dryer: when the customer moved the timer knob to select a cycle, before they had even pushed the start switch, the drive motor immediately began humming (just humming, not actually turning the drum). It would continue like this for 10 seconds or so, then stop.
A few things we want to investigate here. How is the motor getting power before the start switch is even pressed? Why does it not actually move the
A tech here on Appliantology was working on an LG dishwasher where the wash pump wouldn't run, and he ran into some hurdles in some troubleshooting. Let's take a look at the process and see what steps could have been taken.
The dishwasher would fill with water as normal after a cycle was started. But after that, the tech heard something click, but no action from the circulation pump. Additionally, an LE error code displayed.
Some pretty unhelpful troubleshooting directions, as we
A tech here at Appliantology was faced with a Samsung refrigerator ice maker that insisted it was full of ice, even when completely empty. Naturally, in this state, it refused to make ice at all.
A symptom like that clearly points you in the direction of a sensor, issue. But what kind of sensor does this fridge use to sense the level of the ice, and how do we troubleshoot it?
The sensor it uses is an IR sensor -- that is, an infrared sensor. It's made of two components: one is an emitt
A tech here at Appliantology was working on an LG washer with a no drain issue, and the results of his tests left him at a loss. He reported that, when he started a cycle, he heard what sounded like the pump running weakly for a few seconds, then stopping.
Well, that by itself sounds like an issue with the drain pump -- either the pump has failed, or it's clogged. But our tech carried on with a few more tests.
Cracking out his meter, he read something around 5 VDC to the pump at the st
Here's a short and sweet case study for you. An Appliantologist was working on a GE washer with an inop drain pump, and so he ran some tests. We'll go through those tests, and as we do, the problem should jump out at you right away.
First, here's the schematic of the drain pump:
Just a 120 VAC pump that gets Line and Neutral from the control board. Doesn't get simpler than that!
Here's the first test our tech did -- a voltage test with his multimeter from the Line to the Ne
Let's take a look at the buzzer circuit for an old-skool dryer. In figuring out how these circuits work, we'll touch on some important basic circuit knowledge that every tech should know.
First off, here's our schematic with the buzzer circled:
What you should notice immediately is that one side of the buzzer's power supply goes through the centrifugal switch -- that's a switch that is actuated by the motion of the motor spinning. So the to understand the buzzer's circuit, we hav
I covered troubleshooting 240 VAC heater circuits in a previous post, but I wanted to revisit that topic with a more specific focus: can you troubleshoot an inop electric heater entirely from the control board?
Why is this useful to look into? Because in real-world troubleshooting, avoiding unnecessary disassembly is key to quick troubleshooting and avoiding liability. This makes finding Electrically Equivalent Points (EEPs) for your electrical test points eminently practical.
Let's lo
A tech here at Appliantology was called out to work on a refrigerator that wasn't defrosting. However, while he was there, something else caught his eye:
That's not styrofoam -- that's a thick layer of frost completely covering the suction line of the compressor.
What would cause a symptom like this? Why isn't this refrigerator keeping the cold in the places where it's supposed to be? Do we have a sealed system issue on top of our defrost problem?
To answer these questions,
Let's take a look at a problem that can stump a lot of techs, especially ones who aren't as confident troubleshooting circuits. The scenario: a no heat complaint in an electric dryer. Let's pull up the schematic and take a look at the heater:
Pretty standard stuff -- that's a dual heater element, but that doesn't affect our troubleshooting too much.
As always for an electric dryer, the heater is a 240 VAC load. So it needs to get both L1 and L2 to function. L1 and L2 each have 12
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