Dumb DIY

[tonto33]

How not to repair your own fridge.. emailed to me lol..
I've had problems with my Samsung side-by-side, frost-free unit for the past 3 weeks. It's only 2 yr 8 months old so I'm reluctant to scrap it but have found it very difficult to get an engineer to come out and those that will want to charge quite a bit.

The freezer side's OK (for now) but fridge is very cold at bottom, warm at top. The "cool-wall" panel inside the fridge side, on the back wall, low down has a fan inside to circulate cold air upwards and hence out of the vents set at differing heights on the back panel.

I've had the "cool-wall" panel off, defrosted with hair dryers, refitted and the fam intermittently works - then stops completely.

As my beer's getting too cold I sidestepped the issue. My local PC repair shop gave me a PC fan, I wired it to a 12 volt supply using a spare variable voltage transformer (not expensive) and plugged this in the mains. The thin wire passes through the door edge and causes no loss or intrusion of air, is reasonably quiet and helps move the air around inside the fridge.

Depending upon the success I may modify this and place the fan behind the cool-wall panel having removed the Samsung original fan first.

Update..
The temp. fix with the fan placed on a low shelf was not too successful. However, I've now removed the Cool Wall cover, complete with the fan that apears not to be working anymore. I needed to cut the yellow, black and grey wires in order to remove the whole part.

Then removed the Samsung original fan and plastic assemby, taping the PC fan into the recess in the moulded cool-wall panel. Connected back to the 12 volt supply and re-fitted the cool wall and air is now blown up and over the cooling element, and distributed thoughout all levels of the fridge.

as regards defrosting I can manually undertake by switching-of the 12volt fan, remove cool wall panel, heat using hair-dryer then replace all. If I have to do this every 6 months it's acceptable.

[superswill]

oh dear oh dear