Turns out, the fridge just needed a new (used) control panel!
A helpful reader sends me this long but informative video about modern refrigerators. The interesting thing is, he recommends the "Jazz Board" refrigerator made by Whirlpool (Maytag, KitchenAid, etc.) which happens to be the one I have. He claims it has been on the market for 10 years, but mine is 18 years old. I paid over $1800 for this fridge back in 2006 (was I crazy or what?) and today it sells for $1995 on sale ($2300 regular) in stainless steel.
Problem is, the "Jazz Board" control board was flaky - working one day and not the next. Sometimes the buttons would work, other times not. And disturbingly, it would change the temperature settings from 0 and 38 (recommended) to 3 and 42. One day we woke up and both settings were at OFF. What?
Well, as I learned reading the frigging manual if you press the temp up button (+) enough, the highest setting is OFF. So I suspected that the membrane switch panel was shorting somewhere and the control board was thinking I wanted the temperature setting changed or switched off. As I noted before, removing the control panel assembly (which snaps off) and drying it out seemed to work - for a while.
I could not find the membrane switch panel online as it was NLA. On a whim, I searched ebay for the control board part number and found a listing for the entire panel, including circuit board, housing, and membrane switch panel for $144. At first, I was reluctant to install it as the old panel, dried out, seemed to be working.
Then it started its old tricks again. So I swapped the panels - a ten minute job - and we're back in business. The door and temperature alarms are working again and the LED displays even seem brighter. So, fingers crossed, so far so good.
In Engineering, or at least as a technician, we called these "flaky errors" and they are the hardest to track down. One day, the system works fine, the next day it dies mysteriously, only to work again an hour later. There can be so many reasons why these errors occur. A small break in a wiring harness can cause an intermittent connection or spark even (which caused the Apollo 13 and TWA 800 disasters). The wiring harness can flex and make a contact and then break it..
An old girlfriend of mine had a Chevette and the alternator light came on, intermittently. I checked the system and it was working fine. What was going on? I brushed my hand against the hot wire on the alternator and to my surprise, it just moved away. It had made a clean break right at the connection to the crimp fitting that attached to the positive terminal on the alternator. But since it was in physical contact, the thing still worked, although every time she drove over a bump, the alternator light would flicker. Possibly a defect in manufacturing (wire stripper left a slight cut in the wire) exacerbated by fatigue (the wire vibrating as it went down the road. Needless to say, ten minutes with a crimping tool and a new terminal fixed the problem. Diagnosing it was the hard part and in this instance, by accident.
That is the problem with flakies. They are hard to track down. We had one problem in the lab where a computer kept crashing. We put a powerline analyzer on the outlet it was plugged into and realized that our power was "dirty" as hell - spiking and sagging whenever any piece of heavy equipment was turned on or off (and we had a lot of heavy equipment!). It was also a problem with the control boards for our industrial chillers. Power up even a 100HP motor and it is going to create a disruption in the local power lines.
The list goes on and on. Desperate technicians start tearing out one component after another, trying to "fix" the problem. Of course, if the problem is in the wiring harness or a dirty power source, you can replace every circuit board on the machine and still be stumped. Compounding this is the fact that replacement parts are not "burned in" so there is a high probability that your new part may be defective, making the process even more frustrating.
(Burning-in doesn't involve any burning. Rather, a device, such as a phone or computer or whatever, ir run for a number of hours (or even days or weeks) to see if it fails. Most electronic devices have their highest failure rates either right out-of-the-box or at the end-of-life. If you run the devices before shipping them to customers, you can "cull" the lot of "infant mortality" devices and the remaining devices are thus more reliable. Sadly, replacement parts, particularly off-brand parts from overseas, are rarely burned-in, so you end up being the burn-in guy. As a result it is not atypical that a brand-new part is defective or fails early on. This is non-intuitive to most folks!).
Of course, there was a probability that the "new" used panel would also be defective, but I took that chance. The overall cost was less than 10% of the cost of a new refrigerator, so it was worth the gamble, I think. Of course, if I had to pay someone to troubleshoot this and install the new panel, it would have cost hundreds of dollars - and the repair tech would likely have told me the parts were "NLA" and I would have to buy a new refrigerator. It pays to be handy.
Now, as for the microwave, I am not digging into that - the cost of a new magnatron is more than a new microwave in some instances and the high voltages involved could literally kill you. Besides, I already glued the door back together twice and replaced the control panel once, and again, the darn thing is 18 years old. I can buy a brand-new microwave for about $200. Not worth fixing. In terms of used microwaves, I have yet to find one cheap enough to make it worthwhile buying one. $150 for a used microwave is no bargain, when they sell them brand-new for not a lot more.
But we'll keep looking. Supposedly the appliance stores have "Presidents Day Sales" and offer some pretty good deals. That sort of nonsense pisses me off - the idea that a refrigerator costs $1995 on December 4th but costs $2395 on December 5th. Same fridge, nothing has changed, other than an artificial price hike. Since we are in no hurry to buy anything, we can afford to wait - for the right price and the right appliance.
In the meantime, we are learning much - which is essential to making a proper decision. I found the "instruction" DVD that came with our dishwasher and we watched it one night (an hour long!) and realized the dishwasher we have is pretty damn good. The "new" machines are far more costly and made of plastic inside (instead of stainless). The only stainless steel in the new machines is the cosmetic panel on the door. We would be trading down to replace it with a lesser machine. So we will run it to failure before switching it out.
Being cheap is fun - and instructive!
