First time I've ever had a water dispensing fridge was starting like a month ago. But when it was hooked up, I noticed that the lever had to be pushed all the way to the back of the housing to engage the dispenser solenoid. This seemed incorrect because by the time you pushed your glass or whatever you are filling in far enough to trigger the solenoid, the water would miss the front and spill. So the way to use it was to push it with a finger and hold the cup farther out. I didn't think this was as it was designed. I didn't take it fully apart but I did confirm that the microswitch was working fine so based on an online diagram, about the only thing I could see was the lever itself, so I ordered one. $16.
When I took the dispenser area apart I found a lot of stuff going on, including a bent/cracked water lever. Old vs new.
When I started to put it back together, that's when I noticed that the entire housing was all warped. Look how bad that is! Everything was out of whack. Very odd.
Using a heat gun I was able to heat up areas and bend them back into place, and then let them cool. This is some of the lowest melting point plastic I've seen. Not the strongest stuff...
Took a few tries. But I slowly got it closer to aligned. When I first put it back together, the new lever wasn't even hitting the microswitch. Still needed more. So I did more, twisting and pushing and then cooling. Finally it works and the water engages like halfway to the back now, which is great.
Thoughts on the warping:
- Is there some defroster heat in the area perhaps?
- There is no bulb now and Bryan (and the internet) says the bulbs last 3 months but maybe some of the heat was from leaving the bulb on as a nightlight or something.
- Bryan has repaired the ice maker lever multiple times, and I ended up removing the ice maker lever completely when I first got it. That all adds up to a lot of stress and man handling of the area, and may have also contributed.
Either way it seems good now.
Frigidaire water dispenser repair
Frigidaire water dispenser repair
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