GE GTE16DTHHRBB Misbehaving - Freezer Temps Spiking

[JasonTechy]

Freezer Temp Graph Showing Spikes

Freezer top, fridge bottom.

Freezer temp spiking from time to time per the image. Ice cream not solid, soft, and other packages in freezer seem damp to touch. Fridge seems fine, also monitoring that temp. Thought it might be the defrost timer, replaced to no avail. Checked run capacitor, it's within tolerances. Cleaned condenser coils as well. Evap fan in freezer appears to be working just fine. No ice/frost in the freezer and the freezer evaporator coils aren't iced up either. Door gaskets appear to be in working order too.

Poked around the forums and saw one other post about the condenser start unit possibly at fault. Maybe the TSD aka condenser overload relay and start unit in this fridge is going bad?

Thank You For The Help!

[Jonathan Ayala]

On 7/12/2023 at 9:53 PM, JasonTechy said:

Freezer Temp Graph Showing Spikes

Freezer top, fridge bottom.

Freezer temp spiking from time to time per the image. Ice cream not solid, soft, and other packages in freezer seem damp to touch. Fridge seems fine, also monitoring that temp. Thought it might be the defrost timer, replaced to no avail. Checked run capacitor, it's within tolerances. Cleaned condenser coils as well. Evap fan in freezer appears to be working just fine. No ice/frost in the freezer and the freezer evaporator coils aren't iced up either. Door gaskets appear to be in working order too.

Poked around the forums and saw one other post about the condenser start unit possibly at fault. Maybe the TSD aka condenser overload relay and start unit in this fridge is going bad?

Thank You For The Help!

hey big guy i see no one responded but did you find out what was going on?

[JasonTechy]

Hey Jonathan, thank you for checking in.

Unfortunately still haven't been able to figure it out. Freezer still spikes up to high 20s once a day, while the refrigerator portion the entire time stays between 37-40. Tried a new TSD, capacitor, evaporator motor (as original was noisy), and defrost thermostat to no avail. Re-checked the door gaskets too.

Starting to suspect the compressor is going bad...

All ears if you have any suggestions!

[Budget Appliance Repair]

@JasonTechy That freezer temp graph looks pretty good to me - the spikes would be the defrost cycle, (shows as a mechanical timer with a 25 minute defrost every 6 hours - from the temp pattern, I would think it's most likely a cumulative run timer - meaning 6 hours of compressor run time).

Depending on how loaded the freezer is and where you had the temp sensor will change how hi of temp you see in the defrost cycles, (the temp spikes for defrost are only a very short amount of time and it pulls down very quickly after each spike.

What kind of temp graph are you seeing in the refrigerator section?  You might want to bump the refrig temp control up on number, (doesn't look like there's any air adjustment on the freezer - is the foam air block in place correctly in the air diffuser
tower in the freezer?)

[Jonathan Ayala]

yea but isnt that a kind of high temp in the freezer for a defrost cycle? just out of curiosity what was the original complaint from the customer?

[Budget Appliance Repair]

13 hours ago, Jonathan Ayala said:

yea but isnt that a kind of high temp in the freezer for a defrost cycle?

Depends on where they had the recorder probe and if the freezer had a food load in it or not.

If it was empty then seeing that kind of temp swing on defrost wouldn't be unusual at all - The only thing is the problem that seems to have them checking in the first place is the soft ice cream.

The temp swings from -7.3 degrees to approximately 10-12 degrees seem a little wide and if it were at the higher 10 area for longer periods I could understand soft ice cream but the small amount of time it's at the 10 degree area and fast pull down to the -7.3 averaging 6 degrees doesn't look like it should be a problem.

[JasonTechy]

I believe it was the evaporator motor. I gave it a couple more days and sure enough everything froze solid in the freezer.

Confirmed the air block is in the right place, will try bumping up the dial to see if the freezer gets a bit lower. Concern though is that the fridge may get too cold - was considering adding some filler to the air block to keep the fridge a bit lower. Also the freezer was maybe half full with the temp probe in there, perhaps that explains the wide swing in temperature. 

 

I did notice though this fridge does run a lot more than it used to. Need to double-check the door gaskets again.