The How Zone

Fix A Fridge

Taking Things Apart


All in all the outer section of the vent assembly is pretty easy to take apart. It's mostly styrofoam peices glued together with a little bit of strapping tape holding wires together. The vent assembly itself is a bit tougher, having five goofy plastic latches holding it together.

Vent Parts
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Of course I say "goofy" only because I wasn't skilled or patient enough to take it apart without breaking a couple of them. Basically the two halves of each latch need to be squeezed together and pushed in...all five latches at more or less the same time. This is the kind of part most people don't even bother fixing so I doubt there's a jig or rig for taking them apart.

What you see in the photo are the individual components. The geared motor on the left, the vent slider in the back, and in the middle front is a curious cam with electrical contacts.

The cam slips into the 8 shaped cut-out in the vent slider. As the motor turns the cam, the lobe of the cam pushes the slider forward or backwards. From what I can tell the contacts are used by the fridge electronics to tell when it has the slider fully open or closed.


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