sean_barnes24•10d agoMost Upvoted

Tried bypassing a bad control board on a fridge with a universal one, ended up fixing a compressor issue

I had this Samsung fridge that was running warm but the compressor was humming. I figured the main board was toast, so I picked up a universal control kit from a local parts house in Austin for about 80 bucks. After wiring it up per the diagram, the fridge kicked on but the compressor started making a weird clicking noise. Turns out the original board had a bad relay that was killing the start capacitor, so bypassing it actually let the compressor run right again. Has anyone else had a universal board fix a deeper problem like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

mark_green10d ago

Did you check the start relay on the old board before you swapped it? I had a similar thing happen with a Whirlpool freezer last year. The compressor would hum but not kick over, so I grabbed a universal board too. After I wired it up, the freezer started cooling fine. I later found out the original board had a burnt contact on the relay, which was messing with the start capacitor the whole time. The universal board fixed it by giving the compressor a clean signal, so it worked way better than I expected.

mark_chen6210d ago

Yeah I actually watched a video from some repair guy on YouTube talking about this exact thing. He said the start relay can get these little carbon tracks burnt across it that make the compressor act weird but not completely dead. It's easy to miss if you're just looking at the board for obvious damage. Idk, I guess it makes sense that a universal board with a fresh relay would bypass that whole problem.

logan_wood10d ago

Yeah @mark_chen62, I read that same thing somewhere else too, pretty wild.