Amana side-by-side gets warm

Refrigerator & Freezer Repair
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Hi, love this place. My first post, first time I couldn’t figure it out by searching. In fact I just troubleshot and subsequently replaced our 7 year old Kenmore dishwasher last week based on my research here. Now the fridge is causing issues just days later. Happy 2013!

Anyway we have this Amana side-by-side fridge in the kitchen. We bought the house in 2000 and it was already here so it is a minimum of 13 years old. It seems to cycle off for long periods of time. It will be cold one part of the day and warm the next. Like maybe it isn’t defrosting. When it kicked on yesterday the freezer got to -14*. Now it is off again. But at least I feel it is charged and operational on the Freon end of things. Based on what I read here are some of the answers to typical questions I see[LIST]
*]The evaporator is iced and the evap fan is not on. I believe the ice is a result of the low air flow
*]I cleaned out the dust from underneath.
*]The condenser fan is running
*]Compressor is warm and seems to be running.
*]Tapping, changing, etc the controls seems to have no immediate impact on on/off[/LIST]I see some other threads that are in the same ballpark. One mentions a evaporator thermistor but I am not sure where that is located nor how to test. Another mentions a cold control. No idea about where that is located. Also possible thermostat issue (same as thermistor?).

I have the owner’s manual and there is a wiring diagram on the back which is generally legible. This is the basic parts breakdown. http://www.appliancepartspros.com/parts-for-amana-scd25tw-p1303516w-w.html

BTW taking apart a s/s fridge is a pain.

Amana model#SCD25TW
MFG#P1190426WW

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evap fan has 123v brown to yellow and 123v ground (green/yel) to yellow. Evap motor? tapping it and spinning it do not make it kick in. also tried tapping that thing on the evap that I think is the defrost terminator (thermostat?) if I read this right

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Here are your parts
http://www.appliancepartspros.com/partsearch/modelsearch.aspx?model=SCD25TW

Yes it sounds like you need a new evaporator fan motor, see section 03.

Your picture of the evaporator coil does not look good. The reason is that if you only get frost where the freon enters the evaporator coils it is often a symptom of a sealed system problem.
With luck it just looked this way because of the length of time that the door was open.

The defrost thermostat does not effect the fan.
The way it works is that the defrost cycle time is always a set time usually around 30 minutes. But lets say that all the frost is removed after 20 minutes then the defrost thermostat opens and kills power to the heater as you do not want all that extra heat in the freezer.
The defrost cycle continues for another 10 minutes but with the heater off and then the timer switches back into cooling mode.

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looks like the fan fixed it!