Whirlpool WP2169142 Refrigerator Evaporator Fan Blade OEM Part

The fridge is 20+ years old in a home we recently moved into. It sounded like a motor getting stuck on something or grinding weird... was hoping it wasn't something more serious. Found this site, clicked 'noisy' and got the replacement evaporator fan motor blade as well as the motor evaporator. Turned out I didn't really need to replace the fan blade, but since I had it and ours was old, figured I might as well put in the new parts. Followed the videos here, which were really helpful. The biggest hurdle was that our specific model had a bracket that was sandwiched within the evaporator motor that did NOT come with the replacement one from AppliancePartPros. I had to figure out how to take the old motor apart as well as the new one in order to properly sandwich this bracket component in, as otherwise, I wouldn't be able to get it placed in the freezer properly. Not sure if it's just because the model of the fridge I have is so old, but in the video, they say 'there's no bracket here, so just pop out the motor', which I obviously couldn't do. But once I figured that part out (using a variety of hex heads that I have), I connected the red/white/green cables (although the old motor was 90 degrees rotated from the new one) and voila, back in business, no grinding. So aside from the rotated wire connectors (and making sure I connected the proper wires to what I hoped was the proper terminal) and having to dissemble the old motor to get the bracket pieces that hold the motor in place, pretty straightforward. $150 and a few hours so I didn't have to replaced what I came to find out was a $10K built-in fridge? Yes, please.

My KitchenAid refrigerator was not cooling, but the freezer was working perfectly. The help section here listed three parts that could be defective–defrost thermostat, evaporator fan motor and blade, and air diffuser/damper control–so I replaced them all. The videos were EXCELLENT, and despite the difficulty I had squeezing my shoulders into the small freezer compartment, I installed the parts and my refrigerator is cooling perfectly! THANK YOU FOR THE EXCELLENT REPAIR VIDEOS! I am so happy that I was able to repair the refrigerator myself and save a lot of money in the process.

Screwdriver and small nutdriver was all that was needed took about an hour after removing food from freezer. Wire connections were on left side of motor instead of right side facing front, so I connected wires first then faced motor and connections to the back so original wires could reach .

Removed rear freezer panel- 6 Phillips head screws, remove shelf brackets- and found 2 problems. The evaporator coil was touching the panel with tell tale rubbing mark on the back side, and fan bearing was worn out. Side to side movement of motor shaft showed this. Carefully bent evaporator line away from panel, replaced fan motor and blade. Old blade appeared to be out of balance which probably caused the bearing to fail in the first place.

The refrigerator was warm but the freezer was cold. Turn off the refrigerator for 24 hours. Plugged the refrigerator back in, the compressor was not kicking on but the condenser fan and evaporator fan were running. Pulled start relay, measured between two bottom points found Open.. replaced start relay and capacitor and compressor stared immediately and everything worked normally.