Arts and crafts: Refrigerator Repair

My new (2 years old, just outside of warrantee) LG refrigerator stopped making ice. It started making a rattling noise that got louder, then stopped and error code IFE showed on the front panel. The internet suggested that there may be ice buildup behind the white panel in the freezer section (pictured below) and that manually defrosting would cure the problem. So I tried that. I removed the lower freezer drawer and the plastic trays to give myself room to work. then removed the icemaker (2 screws and 1 wiring harness plug) and then the whole white panel popps out. The lower edge of the panel is secured with three plastic tabs along the lower edge so you need to pull it out top first. Then you can access the evaporator coils and defrost them with a hair dryer, heat gun (on low setting), or just let it melt.

It turns out though, that was not my problem. There was no ice buildup in my freezer. In my case, the fan motor that sends cold air to the ice makers (one in the freezer and one in the door), had eaten itself. The noise was the motor internal parts grinding away it’s last life. See next two pictures for gory motor internals. Shield your monitors from eyes of children.

The motor in question normally resides in the module indicated by my finger. A simple phillips head screwdriver is all you need to take it out. In fact, that is the only tool you need for this entire project.

There is a closeup of the existing motor below. No problem. Part number is easily readable. The problems start when I try to get a new one. It seems that part number does not exist. Neither the LG service website nor any internet resource could discover it. They weren’t on backorder or out of stock, they simply did not exist. So, I did some hunting around and discovered a very similar motor part with the last three numbers 313 instead of 304. Same size, same color, same wires, same plug, same spindle length and diameter, same volts and amps. The only difference is the new one has a shorter wiring harness by about 5 inches. As it turns out, that was not an issue. The shorter wires were still long enough to accomplish the job. After waitinig the appropriate amount of time from Amazon, the repair took me 10 minutes and the machine was back into full ice making mode.

Total part cost $42 with free shipping.

Amazon has been inundated by sketchy suppliers in recent years. I was able to find 4 different vendors for this part. All from China with random character vendor names because all the real word names were taken. Since the original part was also from China, I figured that was low risk. Then I noticed that three out of four vendors used the same misspelling on their ad. See the word after “Refrigerator” in the ads below. So they were likely all the same coumpany, doing business on Amazon by spamming them with alternative company names.

Note, the ad at the top cannot even be bothered to provide the correct measurements. The one at the bottom and the one at the top are the exact same item but somehow the ads say they have different dimentions.