19 September 2007

My evening accomplishment.

First let me start off by declaring:


I am the smartest man alive!!!!

Alright, thank you Billy Madison.

Last night I was awoken by the sound of popping and clacking coming from my kitchen. Since every living creature living in the house was in our bedroom, I knew something was amiss. I went out to find my refrigerator freaking out! The ice door was opening and closing and the lights on the front were flashing. I unplugged it and plugged it back in. Everything was fine. I went back to bed...and was reawoken (not a real word, but I'm keeping it) by the same awful racket.

Laura got up as did the dog. Baby Kyia was the only one oblivious to the drama. Laura and I each got on a computer a began Googling. My sweet wife found an appliance repair forum that illustrated our exact problem.

Let me back up and explain our fridge. It is a 2 year old Maytag Ice2O:


This bad boy has french doors, a bottom loading freezer and ice and water in the door! And at that moment I wanted to put a .45 slug into its heart.

One post showed me how to find and disconnect the power to the front panel, which allowed us to go back to bed. The problem was with the power card, a 6x8 circuit card in the back of the fridge. Posters to the forum talked about how Maytag was aware of the problem and if you called up and complained loud enough and long enough, they would have someone fix it for free. I didn't want to wait for that so I read on. There in the forum I found that the problem was not just the card, but more specifically two capacitors on the card. So after work I went my local Radio Shack, bought 2 replacement capacitors, a new soldering iron, and came home to tackle the beast.

After a nice dinner of Hamburger Helper and a visit from our real estate agent to sign the contract that will hopefully result in a sold house 3 weeks from now, I was ready. I removed the circuit board, sat down at the table and tried to recall my soldering (not soldiering) training I received from the Air Force, oh about 12 years ago. I only burned my thumb once, and I am happy to report that the fridge is back in tip top shape!

So I now add amateur Maytag repairman to my skillset.

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