How to Troubleshoot & Replace Ge AP3185407 / WR55X10025 Refrigerator Temperature Sensor

I unplugged the fridge and took all the food and shelving out of the freezer and then proceeded to take off the bottom sliding drawer rack on both sides off (4 Phillips head screws). Then took off the light bulb cover and then the light bulb. Then the back wall that covers the coils and tubes that the refrigerant runs through ( 2 screws with hex head). After sliding out the back wall I could see that the entire coil area was frosted and iced up. I took a blow dryer and melted all of it over about 40 mins and cleaned up the excess water mess it left in front of and behind the fridge. I immediately looked at the bottom of the coils to where the heater bulb is and could tell that the bulb was burned out and fried on one side of the connector piece the bulb assembly. I then proceeded to put it all back together and plug it back in so as to keep it functioning while I awaited the parts I ordered. The fridge and freezer will function and cool correctly for a week minimum while the coils frost over again slowly. I ordered the 2 thermistors and the defroster limiter as well as the defroster heater assembly just to ensure that all components that run the defrosting were fully functioning. About 76 dollars including shipping. Once the parts were in I went through the previous mentioned steps (MAKE SURE YOU UNPLUG AS BEFORE) and once the coiled area is defrosted I first took out the defrost heater assembly. There is a aluminum bracket that covers access and it is 2 phillip head screws. The heater assembly disconnects on both sides where the wires run down the freezer into the tan porcelain ends of the heater bulb assembly. Reinstall the new one in the same way and screw bracket and assembly back on. The defroster limitor is at the top of the coils sitting under the light bulb area. Just carefully pull off the coil pipe and snip and strip the 2 wire with a pair of wire snips/strippers. My advice is to watch the instructional videos on the website on replacing the defroster limiter and the thermistors. You will need the type of wire connectors they show on the videos that can be crimped and can easily find them from a local auto store or home repair store or a hardware store. PAY ATTENTION HERE, the wires for thermistors and defroster limiter have no positive or negative side so it makes NO difference which of the 2 wires connects to each other. I verified this with customer service and thus my unit has worked perfectly since the repair. FYI the first freezer thermistor is near the defroster limiter and the second is located at the bottom left corner tucked away. Both can be seen on instructional videos. Hope this saves someone a lot of time and irritation. 

Yes, a 49-yr old woman fixed this fridge all by herself! AppliancePartsPros was very helpful in the diagnosis of the problem, which I determined to likely be the result of defrost failure. There was a large amount of ice and frost coating the back of the freezer despite the inside temp being 42 degrees. My husband thought I was crazy to think it was a problem with ice when the temperature was warm, but I told him to trust me and I would attempt the repair. He just wanted to throw the old one out (10 yrs old) and get a new one. But I stubbornly said I wanted to a chance to repair it myself - yes a woman repairing a fridge - oh no! So I purchased the three components of the defrost cycle for repair, watched the videos linked to the parts and got to work. When the ice was gone, I took the heater out first for inspection since that was easiest to get to in my GE. A quick look revealed that the ceramic housing for the heating element (a single element heater) was crumbling and it didn't take much force for it to fall apart completely. My smoking gun! Or actually not smoking which was the problem. The dual-element heater replacement didn't have a video, but there were clear written instructions provided. The only thing that didn't quite match up with the instructions is that it said that the pink wire would be on the right and the blue on the left for a metal heater casing. My pink wire was on the left. The instructions anticipated that switching to the dual-element heater would require splicing new wire in to lengthen the pink wire long enough so it would reach the same side as the blue wire. So I had to do some wire stripping and splicing. My husband had all the necessary tools because at one point in his life he had worked on houses, but now he just works at a computer all day. The instructions also made reference to something that I had to Google and learned was silicone caulk. Luckily he had some of that laying around too, so that part was easy. To his credit, he did set up the caulking gun for me :). I think he was secretly hoping that my repair would fail and he could both gloat and buy a new fridge, BUT it's been 5 days and we are down to 0' in the freezer, 36' in the fridge and NO frost buildup. Woot! Victory! [Although I put that it took 1-2 hours, defrosting actually took the longest time of the whole repair (~1 hr), with the actual active me-and-screwdriver repair part taking about 30 minutes, then 3 hours for the silicon caulk to cure.] 

This fridge has had a problem of ice building up around evaporator coil in fresh food side. Wife (she HATES this thing) says it's done this from day one; 10 years. GE guy says all these models do this and there's no fix for it, so we have clean out the ice periodically... Like the 1940s pre auto defrost. Now with the issue of FF side temp too highi assumed the ice had built up around FF evaporator coil preventing proper cooling, but AppliancePartsPros.com suggested the FF temp thermistor may be at fault. It's cheap and their video showed a super easy repair, so I decided to give that a try vs buying a new $2500 fridge to satisfy wife. After removing the thermistor I flung ice build up in the fridge wall cavity holding the thermistor. Thinking that since the ice is 32 degrees, it's close proximity to the temperature sensor would make the control system think the FF side was way colder than it really is; 37 vs 43 actual. I removed the ice and filled the cavity with some packing foam to hopefully prevent ice build up in that area and reinstalled the old thermistor. Fridge is working "ok" now; 3 degree difference in display vs actual. I turned the temp setting down to 34 the get FF side to 37, but wife doesn't understand that...just happy fridge feels cold to her. When she's not around for an hour or so I think I'll put in the new thermistor in effort to match the display to actual temp since it's super easy to do. Thanks Appliance Parts Pros for some super customer service. I'm a customer for life. 

I replaced the refrigerator damper per your online diagnosis when the refrigerator is too cold - ours was running at 30F. I watched the video which greatly aided the install. Our refrigerator was slightly different with more ducting down the back and two additional ducts on the ceiling of the refrigerator. But the video helped understanding how the parts came out. I had to remove two plastic "door" pieces on the replacement duct so they would feed into the top ceiling ducts on my model. I also added some adhesive backed foam on my ceiling ducts to close off the opening to these ceiling duct openings on the replacement duct. The ceiling ducts come out by sliding them toward the front of the refrigerator and they are tricky to slide back in place. You must look on the inside edge to see how the tabs line up and then slide over corresponding tabs on the refrigerator top plate. No tools are required, you just have to futz with it several times to get them lined up and seated fully. If they are not fully seated and pushed back, the light cover will not snap into place on the front taps. I also slit the wire openings on the silicone weather seal in my original duct electric connector and added that to the new one. Before I installed the new duct I pulled apart the old duct and sure enough, the door axle was broken as others had mentioned so this was clearly the problem. The refrigerator is now maintaining 37F per my setting. I didn't replace the Temperature sensor I bought. 

The short... Our GE refrigerator has a dual evaporator. Which means there is an evaporator in both the freezer and the refrigerator. So inadequate cooling in the refrigerator is most likely not related to the freezer at all like it is with models that do not have dual evaporators. After extensive research, diagnosing and testing I was able to determine that the refrigerator evaporator thermistor was not working properly. I replaced all four thermistors (two in the refrigerator and two in the freezer) and refrigerator is working fine. The long...I began to notice condensation on the side by side refrigerator wall adjoining the freezer and food spoiling. The digital readout on the door was showing the refrigerator temperature in the mid to upper 40's. Most of the diagnosis and repair stuff I read or watched said that if the freezer is fine but the refrigerator is not that it is most likely a freezer problem. That it's not getting sufficient cold air into the refrigerator. Typically, either the defrost thermostat, the fans, thermistors or the control board are not working, and it could be any one of these or all of them. So I began to test things to try to test and diagnose the problem. I started in the freezer to no avail. After more research and testing I was able to diagnose the problem as the refrigerator evaporator temperature sensor / thermistor and most likely not related to the freezer at all. All of the research and testing took significant time and effort. You can search online and find videos that show how to test your thermistors at the circuit control board using a multimeter. Basically, you are checking the thermistor resistance at the circuit board plug. You can find a thermistor resistance chart online for your brand or possibly with the refrigerator tech sheet. For this GE model, at 32 degrees F thermistor resistance should be 16.3 ohms and at room temperature it should be around 6 ohms or a little less. If you get something different replace the thermistors. I recommend replacing all of them. When I say that the repair was easy, I mean the repair itself was easy. Finding the problem and getting to the repair was a bit difficult. Hopefully this makes your diagnosis and repair a little easier. 

I first Googled solutions to the problem I was having. I found your website, and the stories others had shared, and felt I needed to at least give changing my Temperature Sensor a try, vs. buying a whole new Refrigerator/Freezer unit. I ordered the Temperature Sensor on a Wednesday, and paid a few extra dollars to get the expeditated shipping; my part was here by Friday! So on Saturday, I was ready to change out the Temperature Sensor. I cleared out the fridge/freezer, then unplugged the unit. I left it this way for about 3 hours. I then began to remove the back panel on the freezer, and discovered all of the ice build-ups, so I pulled out the blow dryer and began to melt the ice. It took about 45 minutes to completely melt. I was now ready to cut the old Temperature Sensor wires and attach the new Temperature Sensor. That's what I did, I used wire cutters and cut the old Temperature Sensor, then attached the new butt connector to 1 end of the Temperature Sensor & crimped it into place, and repeated this step with the other end of the Temperature Sensor. Then, I stripped a small piece of insulation off of the existing Temperature Sensor wires and crimped the new Temperature Sensor onto both of the existing wires. I attached the new Temperature Sensor back onto the evaporator tubing (this is tubing you first removed the Temperature Sensor from). After that, I began to reassemble the freezer back together, by placing the back freezer panel on, tightening the nuts that hold the back panel in place, putting the light bulb back in, the light bulb cover (mine had a screw to attach), then to shelves. I then plugged the unit back into the power outlet. and within 30 minutes or so, the temperatures of both the freezer and refrigerator began to drop. My fix was a success, thank you Appliance Parts Pros.com for the informative videos, and reasonable prices this saved me over $1400.00 dollars. 

The patient: A 2004 GE Profile Arctica refrigerator, freezer suddenly icing up and temperature rising quickly, up to 20° at time of repair. However, the refrigerator part was just fine and mostly staying at 37, which was a bit puzzling. The freezer had similarly frozen up 9 months earlier, at which time all we did was defrost the frozen over coils, and then the fridge/freezer worked fine until a couple of weeks ago, when it suddenly got frozen up again like it did 9 months ago. After reading the information and reviews on this site, I decided to replace the most likely part failure and also the cheapest part, the temperature sensor. The install video for this sensor showed me everything I needed to know and which tools were needed for the repair. First, after removing the back wall of the freezer, we saw that the coils were solidly frozen over, so apparently no defrosting had been happening for about a week. The BEST tool I bought for this job and what I recommend everyone get is a heat gun from the local hardware store. It made defrosting quick and easy, so I didn't need to defrost the fridge for hours like I did the last time (without the heat gun). So defrosting took about 20-30 minutes with the heat gun. Then we snipped the wires of the old temp sensor and attached the new one using the red butt connectors shown in the install video. This took maybe 10 minutes. Then we put the fridge back together, plugged it in, and before long the freezer temp slowly went down. We finished the work at 6 pm and by 8 the next morning the freezer was 0 and the fridge was 37. It's now about a week later and all is still fine. If the coils freeze up again, I plan to buy the second part which is also related to temperature and also only about $20, and installation should be pretty much the same as the temp sensor. And if THAT doesn't solve it, I'll move on to perhaps replacing the defrost heater. I'm very pleased with AppliancePartsPros.com because I ordered the part Sunday night, and paid an extra $5 for quicker shipping, the part shipped Monday and it arrived Tuesday. Also the install videos are wonderful to have and easy to follow. 

I went online to see what the problem may be and determined I may have had a bad temperature senser. I ordered the part from AppliancePartsPro.com and it arrived two days later. A video that demonstrated the repair was also reviewed and the repair looked fairly easy. I did not have the needed red splices and a crimper tool but those were easily obtained from my local Menards store before the part arrived. When the part came, I cut out the old temperature sensor and spliced in the new one. The temperatures in the freezer and refrigerator continued to oscillate (by 16 degrees!) so I thought the problem was not solved. We ended up putting our frozen food back into the freezer thinking that would help temperature stability in the freezer section during the defrost cycle to see what might happen. Within 12 hours, the temperatures to both the freezer temp setting and the refrigerator temp started to hold very steady. We are now 24 hours past where the temperatures became consistent to the settings (no oscillation up and down) and both temperatures remain consistent. We are very happy as we now believe the refrigerator is back to normal! Three shoutouts to AppliancePartsPro.com - their website is awesome as once I put my model number in the search engine finding what I needed was very easy; the feedback and advice on the site is very good; and I was very well informed on where the order was during shipment! I'll come back here first whenever I have an appliance problem in the future! 

Replaced defrost heater, temperature and defrost limiter thermostat. After taking the cover off the air chiller I found the coils frozen solid and defrosted it with a hair dryer. Once defrosted I remover the heater coil to test it it was fine, then I could see the defrost limiter was broken and as I put the unit back together I broke the heater tube (it is glass) so I ordered all the parts that might be defective and replaced them for less than the charge of having some one come to check it out. 

My sensors were the old style that are known to be bad. So i replaced all of them, but it was still freezing the bottom on both sides. So i dug further and found that the condenser fan wasn't working so i replaced it and it's been working perfectly ever since.