Samsung Fridge not cooling right

[BlueGeckoHI]

Model Number: RF4287hars
Brand: Samsung
Age: 1-5 years

I acquired a Samsung RF4287hars refrigerator from a friend's friend. It sat in their garage for a couple months before we got it - that's all I know of it's history. The display was broken, and they had replaced it with a screen for an Rf4289 (which is more like a touch screen tablet than an LCD clock display). As far as we know, it was working the last time they plugged it in.

Everything seems to work... mostly. The freezer and flex zone drawer seem to cool properly, and the fridge does get cold, but doesn't do it quickly and once it got a little warm, it didn't seem to cool down far enough again. This is all over the course of the last few days.

Error codes are 1E and 22E. 1E is the freezer sensor. It seems to work, it has continuity and appears to read properly with a multi-meter, when we removed it from the freezer and checked it in between some frozen veggies in a cooler (per the temperature table we were comparing it to). However, it was displaying temperatures of up to -25 on the fridge's display(and you can only set the fridge as low as -8), so I don't know if it was reading wrong, or if it was cooling more than it was supposed to. We didn't think to confirm with a thermometer (sorry!) because the food was frozen/safe. We were more concerned with losing any food in the fridge area.

22E is a fresh food fan error. The fan works sometimes - you can hear it running when you listen against the back wall, from behind the fridge. The error code comes up intermittently. We plugged the fridge in for a couple days before we transferred food to it. It was getting down to 39 degrees, and we thought once there was food inside it would help keep the temperature low enough. It was good for about a day with food in it, it was reading 36 degrees, still giving intermittent error 22E... until we decided to investigate the error codes and we had the doors open to check things out a bit. Once it got slightly warmer from that, and we also had unplugged the fridge to try to reset it after testing some things, the refrigerator has not gotten that cold again. I think it was mid 40's last night when I went to bed.

I came home today and found the flex zone drawer icons blinking and the display was off. Not sure how long it was like that. I unplugged the fridge and plugged it back in after about 5 minutes. The fridge temp was reading 53, but it dropped to 47 fairly quickly. Then it rose back to 52 and never went lower, even though the compressor was running. This was probably within the course of an hour. Any thoughts as to what would have caused the blinking flex zone LED's/display to be off? That's got me baffled... it hasn't done it before or since.

So we (my husband and I) checked the fridge evaporator coils this evening and found frost (not good). While we had it apart we checked the fan itself. It spins freely, it spins when you put power to it, and when we plugged it back into the fridge (but not put the panel back on), we waited for the compressor to kick on and were able to see it running when we quickly opened the door. Obviously the frost was a problem, so we melted/cleaned it out and put the fridge back together. Still getting intermittent 22E error. It's been approximately 45 minutes now, and the display is just finally showing a decrease of 3 degrees (it was reading 60, from being open/defrosted, now it's 57). It took about 2 hours to get down to 45 degrees (in a steady decline in temp), so we decided to start putting food back in because the coolers wouldn't keep it cold forever. After opening the doors to put food in, it climbed to 50 degrees, cooled down to 48, then back to 50 and never got colder, even when the compressor was indeed running.

The fan works sometimes... othertimes it doesn't. What ISN"T telling it to turn on when it should? Also, power cool does not seem to be working (that's supposed to speed up the compressor, and we don't notice an audible difference).


So, where do we go from here? If the fan SEEMS ok... is it an issue with the PCB board that's not telling it to work properly? The temperature on the display seems to match what our thermometers say the fridge temp is, so that appears to be reading right. Any thoughts?

[Doc Ryan]

It sounds like you may have multiple problems, so it is hard to know where to start. I would start by trying to fix the error codes. I would replace the correlating freezer sensor and fresh food fan. If the problem still persists then you may have a control board or wiring problem. It also concerns me that someone installed a display from a different refrigerator. How do you know the part is compatible and won't cause problems? It would only recommend to use the original display that was made for this refrigerator. And when it comes to the refrigerator cooling down, you should allow 24 hours for the refrigerator to cool down to temperature.

[BlueGeckoHI]

It sounds like you may have multiple problems, so it is hard to know where to start. I would start by trying to fix the error codes. I would replace the correlating freezer sensor and fresh food fan. If the problem still persists then you may have a control board or wiring problem. It also concerns me that someone installed a display from a different refrigerator. How do you know the part is compatible and won't cause problems? It would only recommend to use the original display that was made for this refrigerator. And when it comes to the refrigerator cooling down, you should allow 24 hours for the refrigerator to cool down to temperature.

Thanks Doc. I think they put the newer-model screen on it because it's got wifi and "looks cool", compared to the one meant for the fridge (again, friends of friends so I can't say... but I agree, from an operational standpoint they should've used the one meant for this model).

I ordered a new freezer temp sensor and we installed it yesterday but I'm still getting the 1E error. :-/ However, it also seems to be operating correctly? It shows -4 on the display, which is what it's set to. So.. not sure on the error thing, but at this point I"m just happy with it seeming to operate correctly.

Our fresh food fan is on the way, so I"m hoping that that will clear up the 22E error and fix the fridge. We had tested the fan, as I think I mentioned, and it worked during testing and spun freely, but in the fridge, it just wasn't staying on (or running when it was supposed to); the evaporator coils kept freezing up. So last night we pulled that panel w/ the fan out of the fridge and tested it again, and got nothing - the fan seems to be dead now. Which, I guess is good because it's a definitive problem. Also, by placing a small desk fan inside the cabinet (with the evaporator coils still exposed), the fridge dropped to the proper temp and held extremely quickly. So... we've been chasing the "what's making the fan not work" problem, thinking the fan was ok when really it may have just been the dang fan all along.

We did end up replacing the PCB board, and while the fridge seems to "act better" (compressor cycles on and off more often/isn't running constantly, and the stray voltage that was zapping my husband when he'd 1st get near the board to test with his multimeter is no longer an issue (he didn't tell me about that right away so I didn't post about it originally)). Maybe it was hit by lightning? Or maybe there IS a wiring issue, like you mentioned, and it's buried so deep we can't get to it.

Had we not found the fan to be broken late last night (my husband can't sit idly by with something broke down in the house..lol He's put a lot of time into trying to figure this out (he does mechanical repair by trade on pretty much everything but appliances, so he's got the technical know-how, just not the hours behind the appliances :-)), we were going to try the new fan anyways once it arrive, but were pretty much going to write it off and get a new fridge. It was worth a couple hundred in parts if we could get it running, but not more than than (and at this point not worth the hassle!). As much as I've read through the service manual diagnostics, I can almost tell you which wires/pins on which connectors match up to which parts from memory!

So.. i'll update once that fan gets here and we try that, and fingers crossed that does the trick. If not, she's going to the curb.

I appreciate your input, thanks for replying!

[Doc Ryan]

Sounds good, good luck!