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Ice maker fill tube freezing up WRX986SIHZ01

I have a WRX986SIHZ01 ice maker in the upper left side of the fridge, with ice in the door, that the fill tube freezes up and will not fill the tube tray to make ice. I have taken the ice maker out many times to thaw the tube and then it will work for a few days maybe a month and then just freeze up again and stop filling. I have replaced the tube heater coil, the inlet value and it keeps happening. It seems to happen when there is a blip in our power, I usually have to unplug the fridge. thaw out the tube, plug it back in and then go to code 38 and set it to Long Defrost cycle and then it will make ice for a month or so and then one day just stop making ice and the I find the tube is frozen again. I am not sure what else to try or do. We have one of those power meters, given to us free from State Farm, I think they are a bunch of BS, but when the app says that we have had a power spike or a blip in the service, the fill tube freezes again and I have to do the cycle over again and it will work for another month or so flawlessly. Seems to be a correlation to the power.

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Hi @gregbiel

What is the model number of the refrigerator?

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wrx986sihz01

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wrx986sihz01

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@gregbiel

Bit hard to overcome if it is blips on the input power to the refrigerator. A surge protector's no good, perhaps a line conditioner might work, but that's a bit expensive for random intermittent problems.

Maybe check the capacitors on the receiver board and the power control board are OK and not leaky, domed etc.

Capacitors are used to smooth power supplies.

That's what I'd try

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8 Comments:

I should say that power monitor thing is just plugged into an outlet in the kitchen that monitors the AC and will send a message to an app with any power surges and outages, it is not inline with the fridge, Thank you for the reply and I will checkout the caps on the board.

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@jayeff I was getting water from the door last week and I noticed the water was coming out and then stopped for a second and then started flowing again and the fridge made the sound like it does when you take it out of service mode with SW1 and SW2. After that it did not make ice anymore. I had to thaw the inlet tube and then power cycle the fridge, and then set it for long defrost (code 38) and then it would make ice again since then. When this happens I notice that the ice in the bin start to shrink, like the freezing air is not blowing in the bin. After I reset the fridge it will make ice every hour just like it should and fill the bin with large ice cubes again until the fridge cycles the power on its own. Could this be the control board that is causing this?

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@gregbiel

By "power cycle" do you mean main power off/main power on again?

The refrigerator shouldn't do this by itself. Power should be on all the time, unless there's an outage. Whether components e.g. compressor, ice maker, fans etc are operating or not is different.

Not sure it works or not but when it fails (or even not) try Service test #66 to see if there are any errors.

You could also try Service test #15

If no errors (for either test), when it has failed, before resetting the fridge, measure the DC power supply voltages on the receiver and emitter boards (see board pinout at the bottom of p.5) and perhaps the UI board (Stealth? board) as well.

Just trying to narrow it down to where the problem is as I don't like throwing parts at things without some justification ;-)

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@jayeff I totally agree, I don't want to throw parts at it either, I will try what you suggest the next time it stops making ice.

what I mean by "power cycle" is I was getting water one day and I caught it, I was filling water from the door and the water stopped for a second and the lights on the control panel blinked and I removed the cup from the lever and then pushed it again and the water started flowing again. I also heard that same noise that I hear when I take it out of service mode, there is a dunk and then a dunk dunk dunk kind of noise, and that is what I heard. I monitored it for the next day and there was no ice made and no water filled in the ice tray. I then ran code 19 to start the inlet tube heater for a few minutes, then I ran code 45 and water filled the tray, then I shut off the power to the fridge for a couple minutes, then I turned it back on and went into service mode code 38 for short or long defrost mode and set it for long, then set it out of service mode, then it made ice again

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@gregbiel

Perhaps run a test 37 Ice Box Thermistor.

The thermister is used to monitor the ice being made and also when the ice maker fill tube heater is powered on which should occur when the ice is harvested which is approx. every 1.5hr-3hr

The thermister connects back to the main control board

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