Marginal Temperatures: early milk spoilage and mushy ice cream.

Check and correct the easy things first:

1. Do the light switches turn off the lights when the doors close?

2. Look for excess food preventing either door from fully closing.

3. Badly torn door seals or a twisted door (a gap over 1/4 X 6"). (See Manual 7: Refrigeration for examples of and tricks for changing a door seal.)

4. Set controls to mid-range. Many mistakenly believe jamming the controls to maximum will help solve a problem. Rather, it tends to introduce more problems.

5. Did the kids or company leave a door open too long? If this is even a faint possibility close the doors and don't draw any definite conclusions for 6 hours.

6. Carefully check and clean the condenser coils underneath.

If none of the above problems is found, the problem is either insufficient air flow---which may be caused by a defrost system failure---or insufficient cooling by the freon system.

Either of these problems will require disassembly of the freezer section and a detailed inspection.

The evaporator cover is on the back wall of a side-by-side freezer, and either on the floor or back wall of a top freezer. (For more detail see Freon System and the Evaporator in Manual 7: Refrigeration.)

Is there visible frost build-up on the evaporator cover?

Some Cooling
Troubleshooting Refrigerators
Diagnostic System