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[Kathy19078]

My refrigerator just started making a strange noise. It is not constant only every now and then. Every so often it sounds like a motor is shutting down. The food is being kept cold. It is hard to explain. I called a few repair places today but it seems they are closed until Monday. So I will call again on Monday. My refrigerator is a Kenmore and probably about 15 years old. About 8 years ago I did have to replace the ice maker, which cost me about $300. My problem is that I do not have the money to buy a new refrigerator right now, and I do not have a credit card to put it on. So I thought I would get a repairman to tell me what is wrong with it, and what it would cost to fix it. Several months ago the knob broke on my washing machine. It is also a Kenmore, and it is 20 years old. I called a repairman, and he fixed the knob and told me if it breaks I should get it fixed because it is a good washer, and they don't build them like that any more.

Any suggestions and/or advice here will be appreciated.

[homedecor1]

Mine is a whirlpool and doing the same thing! We cleaned the back and vacumn every week the vents....guess it's time for a new one because I can't stand the "" loud noise"" anymore! The I e maker BROKE about 3 months ago (still makes I e but can't use dispenser) repair quote was $200+until they take it apart! Forget it this frig is 14 yrs old time to go!!!

[Q4u]

Do you pull the fridge out from the wall and vacuum the back of it? It's important to keep the exposed parts clean of dirt and dust.

Our 4 year old brand new Frigadaire would sometimes sound like a an old clanky machine. It was the ice maker and the design is horrid. It freezes shut at the back of the maker. Every three weeks we would take the dang thing out, toss the cubes, warm up the back with warm water and unstick the ice and then start all over again. Horribly designed. We finally turned the thing off. No more ice, no more horrid sounds...

Good luck. Try turning off your ice cube maker just to see if it makes a difference before you spend the money having someone come by to look at it.

[taquito]

Last time I had a repair person out for the range, I quizzed him on maintaining appliances. He told me the biggest reason refrigerators fail is because people don't clean the coils. Mine are on the bottom and there's a plastic grill to remove and then carefully vacuum, or use a soft duster. You don't want to damage the coils, but they collect so much dirt and dust and that hurts the performance. If you can clean the back, that's great, too. I know I can't get mine away from the wall without a Herculean effort. ........Anyway, try cleaning the coils and wherever you can reach first to see if that helps.

[Desertdi]

It's the defroster cycle going on and off.

[Campion]

The compressor and the defroster make more noise after a while--the brackets get loose or the motor wears a bit. For example, if you hear a "CLUNK!" and then silence, assuming your fridge is keeping everything properly cold, that's the compressor shutting down, but it's looser and it shakes when the motor shuts off.

The defroster is a whirring sound motor, and it runs intermittently, and you hear it, then it goes quiet. (It runs hot air into the freezer, more or less....)

They get noisier over time.

[VaBelle35]

Other things to check for are to make sure your fridge and freezer are at least half full. If it's too empty, it has to work harder to keep things cold. They recommend bowls of water in the fridge and freezer to take up space if you don't have anything in there.

Make sure that your freezer isn't too packed that the vents are blocked and the air can't circulate.

Make sure that the racks aren't jiggling. I had an odd noise and I finally figured out that the freezer rack had moved off the rail and was knocking a box of something against the wall every time it turned on.

See if you need to manually defrost your freezer (empty it and unplug it to get the ice melted that had built up). GE recommended that to me when my last fridge was on its last leg. They said to try that as a last resort.

I try to remember to vacuum my coils when I have the vacuum out. It's easier with my new fridge. But I'll notice it runs a lot (I work from home most days) and realize I probably need to vacuum.