About that noise......

My GE (circa 1999) doesn't make exactly the same noise, but I hear a rather frightening sound when the compressor shuts off.

I live in the Pacific Northwest, and never turn on the heat. This sound is loudest and occurs most often during cold weather.

Does anyone know if it portends something disastrous? I've been hearing for years.

Could be a fan bearing or other bearing for the ice mech. If said friend needs a fridge, give it to him.

You'd have to isolate it to either the condenser fan or the compressor. The fan motor usually being the type shaped like an H, bearings can make some crazy sounds especially if amplified by the condenser coil. Compressers can also emit funny sounds when they are turned on/off. Also a compresser in rubber mounts can cause the plumbing to shake at start/stop and bang into something. Fly me out and back home and I'd be happy to fix it free of charge.

And you'd get to hear a great home-theater (and sound) system, too.

Sorry, I don't have the money. But you're welcome if you're in the neighborhood.

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Maybe some rotten rubber or foam shock absorber.

Fridges are killers for odd noises. About a year ago when I refitted our kitchen, we bought a fancy (and very expensive !) black Bosch fridge / freezer. I have no complaint at all at the way it works, and it's virtually silent when running. But every now and then, it emits the loudest CRACK! you have ever heard - sometimes a double one. It is so loud that you would swear that something must have broken. Sometimes, when I am sitting here in the dead of night, and the house is all quiet, it will do it and nearly make me jump out of my skin ...

Arfa

Ice maker spitting out the next batch??

G=B2

Ice maker spitting out the next batch??

G²

Ice maker !! ?? This isn't America you know ! Here in the UK, icemakers in fridges and freezers are quite rare, and only fitted to either the most obscenely expensive units, or DIY warehouse 'deals' with models that are all fur coat and no knickers, and guaranteed to just about last out the warranty. So it's not the icemaker (that it hasn't got ... ) :-)

I suspect that it is some piece of insulation expanding and contracting, or maybe some layer of ice deep in the freezer section that cracks away from whatever it's stuck to. I've learn't to just live with it now as it doesn't seem to affect the operation, and a year on, nothing is visibly falling off on it.

Arfa

Arfa, he was trying to be funny. The sound of ice cubes being ejected into the ice-cube-holding box sounds exactly like ice cubes being ejected into an ice-cube-holding box. You wouldn't mistake it for anything else.

This I know, William. Having spent a fair bit of time living in American vacation homes, I am quite familiar with the sound of ice cubes being discharged into the holding hopper. i didn't actually see the comment as an attempt at humour. Seemed to be a reasonable suggestion based on the fact that ice discharging can be quite noisy. I guess it's another example of the differences between British and American humour ... :-)

Arfa

Maybe he wasn't trying to be funny. But it struck me that way.

I sometimes post really absurd comments, and they're taken seriously. Like one about variable capacitor lubricants (as opposed to variable-capacitor lubricants): "Does anyone make a fairly stable capacitor lubricant?" And I got serious -- and apparently useful -- replies.

The British have humor? Who knew! Is that why you use all those extra 'U's? ;-)

I think it's spelled "humour".

On 9/29/2009 12:45 PM Michael A. Terrell spake thus:

Well, apart from Monty Python, Dame Edna, Eddie Izzard and Benny Hill, no.

It must be something like the Law of Conservation of "R"s (they drop them in certain words, but insert them intrusively into others).

The frige I have that's maybe 12 years old or more, sometimes makes a gurgling or percolating noise after running the cooling cycle.

I don't know what the noise is, but it's been doing this for years.

It also makes a loud popping noise sometimes, like someone else suggested, that almost sound like spot welds being separated or shot with a BB gun (fairly loud), but no operational symptoms have been noticed.

It might be worthwhile to do some curent checks, or get a Kill-A-Watt meter to see if there are any irregularities to be concerned about, but it's only a mildly annoying situation.

-- Cheers, WB .............

The gurgling-after-motor-shutoff is apparently fairly common (I've heard it from a number of refrigerators) and is described in the cited article as "Primarily the sound of refrigerant evaporating (boiling) as it enters the cooling coils."

The popping/cracking: icemaker? or the coil-defrosting cycle as suggested in the cited article?

Another possibility: on most refrigerators the outside (heat-dumping) coils of the compressor system are mounted on a metal gridwork, which is fastened to the rear or bottom of the chassis. As the coils and gridwork heat up (when the compressor is running) and cool down (after the compressor shuts off) there's likely to be a fair bit of thermal expansion/contraction, which will put some stress on whatever arrangement is used to mount or clamp the coils and grid to the chassis. Possibly something in this mounting is snapping back and forth or working mechanically, to relieve the stress - this would cause the whole coil/grid assembly to "ring" loudly.

On 9/29/2009 3:47 PM Dave Platt spake thus:

I suggest that Arfa, who reported this odd behavior, set up the fridge running in a room with a couple of webcams (and mikes) focused on it, so we can investigate this further.

But we invented Python and The Office and Fawlty Towers .... AND the English language. Not our problem if you forgot how to spell it on the long sea journey over ... :-) I have to admit that your Mr Bush was pretty funny though !

Arfa

Awww. Love to help you out on this one boys, but no time. Off on me hols in a couple of days. Yay ! Can't wait !! :-)

Arfa