[rad]

After a brief power outage Saturday, the ice maker has stopped working. At first, the cubes were odd shaped, kinda like two cubes in one. I replaced the water filter(due), removed, inspected carefully(didn't turn the dial)and re-installed the ice maker. It spit out a few cubes, then quit. The main shaft used to visibly move during an eject cycle, I believe. There's ice in it now, but it won't eject. I've got a Katrina refr. in the garage keeping us cubed, so I can take my time and replace parts, or shotgun it; I just need to know which one(s). A local appl. parts store guy suggested a bad heater thermister.... Thanks

[PS Staff - Sheila]

There should be a sheet on the test procedure in under the fridge behind the kick plate.

It may be the transmitter and receiver that is causing your problem.

Here is a link to your fridge model ksrg25fkss16.

[rad]

Well, since my last post, I removed the icemaker, tested the heater(51 ohms), tested the thermal sw.(infinity at room temp,zero ohms after cold soak). I noticed inside the cover plate a reference to the finger shaft index position (two o'clock). They were at six o'clock. So, I carefully removed the drive motor, rotated the mechanism ccw(viewed from the cover end) until shaft was at two o'clock, reassembled, re-installed unit. It filled ok, the fingers rotated to approx. ten o'clock...After an hour and a half, inspection revealed the cubes are frozen and in their buckets; the fingers are at six o'clock!!! Shiela, can you help me understand how the trans/recvr. may be at fault? I haven't yet found that test sheet; only a spec shet and schematic..

[PS Staff - Sheila]

Here is a link on how to test your ice maker.

[rad]

Well, I bit da bullet and bought a new ice maker. It's working fine and hopefully will last a long time. So, I disassembled the old one. I removed the large gear and found one set of contacts mangled. The motor had to have rotated backwards a bit during the input power problem noted in my first post. And dat's da name of dat tune!!

[MesserSchmidt]

strangely, this exact same thing happened to me this weekend. There was an inexplicable power outage (weather was clear, still) and the power company was out in about 45 minutes to an hour and got it back on.

By Sunday morning we had run out of ice and that's when I noticed the ice maker wasn't working. It's been spending it's time with the harvester at 6 o clock, with the fingers frozen in the ice beds. So last night I ran the optics test, it passed, so I melted the ice, made sure the supply hose wasn't frozen, and ran the component diagnostic. It rotated around, filled with water, the board returned a "no fault" code (solid light for 5 seconds), and the harvester stopped at 2:00 as normal. Then, in the next hour or so, it produced some little sickle shaped ice cubes (probably because I had introduced air into the system by disconnecting the hose to make sure it was clear), and I went to bed. This morning I got up, and once again the harvester is frozen into the ice cubes and sitting at 6 o clock.

What it seems like to me is that if a power outage occurs at just the right time in he harvest cycle, it can break the icemaker module. I haven't disassembled it yet but tonight I plan on performing an autopsy on the module. My guess is that a power outage of just the right length of time, just at the beginning of a harvest can allow the ice cubes to melt (due to heat from the mold heater) and refreeze with the harvester frozen in the ice, and then some of the internal parts in the timer are broken when the motor tries to turn again. That could probably produce physical evidence of the motor turning backward, as mentioned by the original poster. I imagine it could be prevented by turning off the icemaker until the power is back on again, and then checking to make sure the harvester isn't stuck in ice before turning it back on.

I'll update y'all with my findings.

[MesserSchmidt]

While home for lunch, I removed the ice maker and took out the timer module. There is a small electrical burn mark on the back of the gear wheel, and the gear wheel has a crack in the hub, but I couldn't find anything that seemed like it would actually prohibit the module from functioning. I'm still not sure what's going on now, because I've checked it and found solid ice in the mold, with the harvester just ready to start pushing the ice out or already having begun pushing, though not visibly moving(about 4:30). Then, a few hours later, the fingers are at 6:00-7:00, frozen in the ice, and no additional ice is in the bin - meaning the ice that the harvester is now stuck in is the same ice that it was NOT stuck in hours earlier. It seems like it's functioning normally until it reaches 6-7:00 and then the harvester stops indefinitely.

At this point I know it doesn't really matter, because I know it's the module, but as an engineer I guess it's just in my nature to REALLY want to find the exact cause.