Damn thee, GE Profile Arctica!!!

Ordered the control board yesterday at 4:30pm, it arrived 15 minutes ago. Nice 21 hour turn-around time. I popped the old one out, popped new one in. Fridge is now working. Nice layer of frost already on the coil.

I checked the old board. There's a burn mark on the back side under the relay.

If anyone ever reads this and does this themselves, do yourself a favor and order the plastic stand-off pins that the board mounts to. I snapped 2 out of 4 putting the new board on.

Also, the replacement board's pin blocks were in different locations, but everything fit.

I have to admit, I was hasty to condemn GE. The part was readily available, it was an easy fix. If it were under warranty I would have called GE, but since it wasn't, I DIY'd it. If you can operate a screw driver and needle nose pliers, this is doable. $140 in parts and Fedex versus a new fridge.

And although I did see a rumor that this board might be part of a recall, I couldn't get GE to fess up to anything.

Picture in your mind the back of the board, where the relay module's pins set in the board. One of the pins (and all of the solder) was burned away, leaving a dark crater. After some tracing of the circuits, I figured out the burned pin was on the output side of the relay. I tried taking a picture of it, but I can't get my crappy camera to take a close up.

Also, I snapped the two stand-off pins while I was trying to set the new board.

20 years ago I used to wire up building and refrigeration control panel cabinets, and package/receive damaged/repaired boards in and out of the shop. The way this board arrived (wrapped in pink bubble wrap inside an OEM box) really brought back some memories.