Maytag MFF2558VEM4 cold freezer warm fridge

[chiefpokagon]

I have an 8 year old Maytag french door refrigerator which has been troublesome for the past 5 years ago.  It started with the ADC failure.  I replaced the evaporator fan motor and  jazz board and bought a surge protector.  Last year the duck bill drain plugged leaving water on the floor and giving the box a "bladder control issue" according to my daughter. Whirlpool sent a free p trap replacement.  This weekend it again developed the cold freezer and warm fridge symptom.  There was modest frost build-up in the freezer, but not as bad as 5 years ago when I replaced the control board.  I followed the Samurai’s advice and put it into forced defrost mode and could hear the condenser fan continue to run, so I thought the ADC/Jazz board needed replacement again.  I continued the rest of the troubleshooting steps to make sure that there were no other bad parts and low and behold the evaporator fan began blowing cold air into the fresh food compartment.  The fresh food compartment has cooled, but I'm not sure if the coils will completely defrost after a few days or if I need to turn the box off and let the ice all melt off.  I'm also not sure if the fix is permanent or if it will frost up again and I will eventually need to replace the ADC/Jazz board again!  Any advice appreciated!

[delawaredrew]

Couple of possibilities:

-simple frozen defrost drain trough and you thawed it when in forced defrost

-another ADC. 

Either way I'd let it run and monitor if it was in my house. Assuming nothing else is wrong you can always force defrost again if needed. The jazz boards are common enough to not surprise me if it failed again.

[KaveMan]

You're probably getting partial defrost from defrost bimetal kicking out too soon. It should be changed every time you have defrost issues anyway. Part #67003426. Be sure to waterproof connections with shrink wrap.

[LaRayParateur]

If the condenser fan continues to run during forced defrost, it's likely the compressor relay on the Jazz board that begins to stick closed.

Often, just by unsnapping the console at the top of fresh food section, the shock is enough to free the relay for some time.

Unfortunately, if both the heater and compressor work at the same time, usually the ice melts on the bottom of the evaporator coil, but freezes near the upper part of the coil further from the heating element.

You can check total current drawn by the fridge to see if it's only the heater, or the heater and compressor together. With a stuck relay, it doesn't matter if the ADC works well or not as the compressor won't stop during defrost.

A stuck compressor relay will also make the freezer section too cold even if everything seems good in the fresh food section.