Greg In The Desert

When I moved into this house several years ago, I had to buy new kitchen appliances. I allowed the salesman at Ballios to talk me into Frigidaire appliances. A mistake I now regret as one of the more problematic appliances has been the refrigerator. Among it’s many problems, a few months ago the ice maker would not stop making ice once the bin was full and a few weeks ago it failed to make ice at all.

The ice maker is a pretty common and simple in design. It consists of metal ice tray, a rotating arm to push ice out, an arm to sense when the ice bin is full and the various gears and motors to run these items.

I went online and read various resources on how to troubleshoot the ice maker. I needed to remove the front panel of the ice maker and I should be able to turn the main gear with a screwdriver. I wasn’t able to do that in fact it was nearly impossible to turn the gear at all using a wrench and pliers. It became clear that the main motor that runs the whole assembly had become seized or failed in some way and it would be easier to replace the whole ice maker than mess with the motor.

Based on various readings on the world wide web, I purchased a Frigidaire 5303918277 icemaker from Amazon for about $50.00, which was the cheapest I could find it. I don’t think it’s an OEM product and it doesn’t look exactly the same, but functionally it’s the same.

I was very concerned that replacing this thing was going to be a big ordeal. As it turned out, it was almost a plug and play install. The old ice maker had two bolds holding it in and a wiring harness. The water supply isn’t attached to the ice maker, its sort of a funnel that pours water into the ice maker (makes sense otherwise the water supply would probably freeze). The most difficult part was removing the screws. Since I couldn’t see them I had to use two hands, one to feel around for the screw and guide the socket and the other to operate the socket. I bolted the new ice maker in, leveled it and attached the wiring harness. I was making ice again within 30 minutes.

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