Jenn-Air JFC2089HES ran fine but now keeps fridge at 45° and freezer at 28°

[mbed]

Greetings all!

Our french door refrigerator has been fine for many years. Last few days to a week or so has the temperature not cooling enough in both compartments. Checked for airflow in side, cleaned coils in back and under side, not really a noticeable improvement. Condenser fan running strong, compressor most likely working since it holds a reduced temperature but not low enough.  from a previous post, I learned about frost patterns on evaporators. I looked on the back wall of the freezer section (bottom freezer) and saw light frost. would that suggest the defrost cycle is not working properly (timer, heater, sensor, etc?)?

Other possibility is to check refrigerant level using a bullit valve on the low side...would anyone please venture a guess as to what would be quickest way to diagnose and repair please?

Thanks in advance!

[Budget Appliance Repair]

@mbed If you see ice on the back wall of the freezer and you haven't pulled the cover to actually see the evaporator coil to really check the frost pattern then you most likely have a defrost problem or if the ice/frost build up is on the outside of the rear freezer panel and only in one spot you could have sealed system problem with an ice ball at the evaporator inlet because of low on coolant.

You really need to pull the evaporator cover panel off to see that the evaporator coil is either plugged completely with ice because of no defrost or a big ball of ice at just the evaporator inlet would be sealed system problem.

If it is working correctly you should see a light layer of frost over the complete evaporator coil from top to bottom.

[mbed]

Hi Willie,

Thank you for your reply earlier! The evaporator has a large chunk of ice top right corner.

Additional info: defrost heater has continuity and 29 ohm resistance across it. Also, the evaporator fan is running strong.

I'm not sure if block size suggests sealed system but I am guessing I can check thermostat (on copper tubing with brown and red wires by disconnecting the plug seen in the top next to the ice maker's water inlet. I'm not sure where the white thermistor terminates though. It is the pair of semi thick white wires seen near the thermostat.

Do I have hope to repair this? Remaining possible fail points are the thermostat, the thermistor or timer if it has one? Possibly main board though most other thinsgs seem to work...

I found a service manual on this site which has helpful info but I tried to put into service mode and there was not response on the keypad.

Thanks in advance!

 

[mbed]

additional info: thermostat at ~ambient temp has no continuity but 56.1 kilo ohms...

 

 

[mbed]

not sure why the picture went to the middle of the sentence!

[Budget Appliance Repair]

Time for a new refrigerator or an expensive repair bill - that's a sealed system problem.

That big ball of ice is the evaporator inlet where the tiny capillary tube connects to the evaporator - it's very low on refrigerant so only had enough to cool at the first point when the refrigerant expands from a liquid state to a gas.

Since it never gets cold enough to satisfy the refrigerator temp it runs constantly causing that big ice ball.

[mbed]

That was a helpful explanation...makes sense! Thanks for your help!