The garage fridge has been trusty for a long time. It's an older Jenn-air unit that works well but after a while it starts to get warm. I can unplug it for a day and it works well again for about a month and then does the same thing. We have quite the sticker collection from our travels on the front which makes it probably more special to keep but didn't know if anyone has had a similar experience that there is a home repair fix.
If you are in a humid area this time of year, could it be a frost build-up issue? I recently went through this on the freezer side where there is a heating element specifically for thawing the coils. Ice kills the efficiency of these things and can come into play when there's moisture in the air.
Sounds like a bad defrost board or a bad defrost element. I just changed the board in the office refrigerator.
They aren't hard to change. Check with repairclinic.com for parts. They also have manuals and how to videos that help.
Leaking door seals on the freezer side can cause the coils in the rear of the freezer side to freeze up with gathered humidity. By unplugging it you are in effect defrosting it.
It can be as simple as something in the unit is preventing the door from completely closed. Only takes a very small crack to freeze up.
YMMV
It sounds like the coil is freezing up, if there isn't a lot of traffic opening the door letting in moist air it will take a while to fill the fins with ice. If it is old enough to have a mechanical timer for the defrost cycle it is an easy fix. Look around the top of the fridge section by the controls for a 1/4" hole. You can stick a screw driver in there and turn the timer manually. Turn it until the compressor shuts off and wait to see if you hear sizzle from melting ice in the back of the freezer.
If the compressor starts running again without ice melting, your timer is fine but your defrost heating element is bad. Pull the back out of the freezer section and see what you need to buy.
Thanks guys, guess I need to pull the back cover off and check. I took off the bottom cover where the fan is and it wasn't dirty but I didn't remove the entire back plate. The fridge model I looked up says it was made in 2001. It has been abnormally hot this time of year but didn't know if that had anything to do with it or not
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