[cowboyshome]

Like other 4 year old Maytag side-by-side refrigerators (MSD2756GES), ours is suddenly not keeping the food side at normal (37-40) temperatures. Ours does have the Ice/Water dispenser – but it is not attached to anything at this house. We are a bit stumped as to why the temperature problems and so here is an outline of our situation:

The freezer section is fine and is holding at zero degrees both top and bottom and it is set at 7 like usual (9 is Coldest and 5 would be the mid-range on the dial). The freezer side also has a fan running in it when the refrigerator is running also and you can feel air movement inside the freezer compartment. There is no visible ice anywhere.

We made sure the exterior lower back grill area was clear of any debris/dust and there is none we can see under the fridge. When the refrigerator is running, you can definitely feel air movement behind the lower backside grill and a little under the fridge, but no air movement toward the top backside.

After watching temperatures over the past week moving the temperature slides by one number until everything was at coldest – it just won’t get below 50 degrees on the top shelf. So inside the now empty food compartment, we did a temperature study over time (with the food section also set at 7 which is much colder than it normally sits at) and found (from the lowest bin up to the top shelf) that the temperatures stayed consistently as follows in degrees F…

36 – bottom bin
38 – middle bin
32 – meat drawer
36 – bottom shelf
46 – both middle shelves
50 – top shelf

Having observed water puddle on the floor of the food side, under the bottom bin…we discovered ice formed around the vent area that goes into the meat bin. When the refrigerator is running (and you can hear the fan running on the freezer side), air is not perceptibly moving into the food side. There is an opening between the two sides (presumably) where a plastic box in the back sits with a thin piece of plastic like flap covering the opening at the middle bin height level and sticking one’s fingers in there – there is no air movement nor is it perceptibly any colder than the food compartment. We did find some ice forming around this box also.

Not sure if this means anything, but about two days after all this started – a week ago - we had one day where the refrigerator ran almost continuously, so we turned off the power – waited a few minutes and turned it back on again. This seemed to help reset the constant running and now it is turning on and off more like we are used to. Would sure love to know what is going wrong!

[applguy]

Let me make sure I have the facts right. The evaporator fan in the freezer is running. The condenser fan under the unit is running and the condenser is clean. The compressor is running. The lights are shutting off when you close the door. All frost has been removed from the return duct behind the crisper and the meat drawer duct. You shouldn't feel any airflow at these points, because you have the refrigerator door open. With the doors open, the air stream path is not defined, and the airflow is all wrong. Airflow will not be correct until both doors are closed. You should, however, feel a slight amount of air at the left edge of the FF ceiling, about half way back. Freezer is between 0 and 10 degrees, not below 0, and you feel plenty of air coming towards you at the top of the freezer section. If all of this is true, you have a bad thermostatic damper in the ceiling of the fresh food compartment. Are you interested in trying to fix it yourself or would you feel more comfortable calling in the local guys?

[taekyon2]

I have the same problem. My model is Maytag msd2756de. Freezer fan works, and is cold. Compressor works, it's fan works. The coils behind the panel in freezer were totally frozen. Dethawed it. Barely any airflow through the vent at the top of the fridge side, and no difference whether I move the slider to 1 or max. It is not iced up, and when closing the freezer door, I get good puff of air through the vent. Seems like the flap is not opening all the way.

[iMayco]

I recently repaired a side by side with a very similar problem, the problem was the timer was broken, located on the food side where your temperature controls are... The timer controls all your refrigerator functions, when your evaporator fan and compressor are running your defroster shouldn't be, then the timer shuts off your compressor and evaporator fan for about 15 minutes for the defroster to thaw out the ice and frost on your back panel, broken timer caused very cool freezer section, and the food side was not cool enough. Very simple fix but you will want to make sure everything else is functioning properly before replacing timer... evaporator fan, defrosting unit, bi metal thermostat, the latch that regulates airflow from freezer to food side... The Timer can be manually activated or "moved" into the next cycle with a flathead by rotating clockwise until it clicks, this will manually shut off evap fan and compressor and start defroster, after defroster shuts off give 10-15 minutes for evap fan and compressor to turn on automatically, if they don't, you know your problem. =]
-Mayco Torres