Anyone know anything about refrigerators?

Mine is having issues. Its a 3 year old whirlpool. We did not buy it brand new, so no warranty. It has been great except for about the last 4 months. It is freezing everything (except the ice cubes, but I'll get to that in a sec)
Anything that gets pushed to the back half of the fridge is freezing in less than 24 hours. I just went to make dinner, grabbed a bowl of sliced tomotoes that I just put in there last night, and they were like tomatoe ice cubes! I have it set on between 1 and 2, and 3 is the recommended setting. Anything towards the front is ok, but actually the milk seems like it could be a little colder. I don't know.
Now for the ice. We have an icemaker, and it is not freezing the ice cubes all the way. When the arm goes around to scoop them up and dump them, they are still watery, and then that water builds up on the arm, and then freezes, and jams up on top so it can't move through the cycle without us going in and breaking the excess ice off. It makes a terrible noise because it is trying to move while frozen. It's like the timer is set too fast, and needs to be slowed down a bit to allow more freezing time before it kicks the ice out. We have looked on the internet for a way to slow it down, and can't find anything. Seems like the only option is a new icemaker, and they aren't cheap. And with the problems with the fridge, I'm not wanting to spend any money on a new icemaker.
Anyone have any ideas??

Thanks!

you make alot of money here buy a new one D

i just bought myself a guitar because i deserve it lol!

OK I'm not a qualified repair person so my opinion shouldn't count for too much. However, if it were my fridge the first thing I would do is to pull the fridge out and clean the coils on the back. They will be hot so you want the fridge unplugged for a while.

I'm assuming that your fridge isn't overly full. When we have too much stuff in our fridge it tends to freeze things in the back.

As for the ice maker, if cleaning things doesn't help and you can't afford to repair/replace it I'd just rip it out and use ice trays. It's a crappy option once you're used to an ice maker, but it is cheap.

get into the freezer and see if there is a panel you can remove. if there's a buncha metal tubes in that panel and they're frozen up, that's your problem. take a hair dryer to it.
you could have either a bad temperature control unit or, uh, something else. ours did somethign similar - froze everything - and we had to defrost those tubes about every 3 weeks for months, til we got it fixed.

I'll check that tomorrow. Thanks for the info everyone. But as for buying a new one..hmm. I don't have that much money. Gotta pay bills ya know??

We're having the opposite problem with our fridge. It doesn't keep things cold at all. We've cleaned the back panel because the vents were frosted over, which helped for a while. But it just came back.

It's a good thing we have another fridge in the garage wink We're gonna get a family friend to check it out. Btw, our fridge is by Amana.

One other things about the freezer unit. I remember that my mom had one that didn't work either, and it had the same problems (not freezing enough, then the "arms" get frozen stuck). It turned out that the problem was the motor...it wasn't designed to work when it was too cold, which caused it to not reset properly after dumping a load of ice. Hence, it would get frozen by layers of water, and not work.

Yes, that's right ... it was the motor, not being able to be too cold ... and yet they put it on the icemaker of a freezer. It is possibility that's your problem ... and if it is, you either need to get a new freezer motor, or just a new fridge altogether.

[quote0a0eaf0af6="gnznroses"]get into the freezer and see if there is a panel you can remove. if there's a buncha metal tubes in that panel and they're frozen up, that's your problem. take a hair dryer to it.
you could have either a bad temperature control unit or, uh, something else. ours did somethign similar - froze everything - and we had to defrost those tubes about every 3 weeks for months, til we got it fixed.[/quote0a0eaf0af6]
I've had to do this too, and this is exactly what I was going to tell you to do. It could be a bad thermostat, but you mind as well defrost your freezer and see how that goes first.