Found out from a Frigidaire bulletin last Tuesday that those ice maker failure codes we see all the time are actually caused by a $12 plastic gear that strips out after about 50,000 cycles.

I was digging through old service manuals at a shop in Tucson and spotted a little footnote about the gear being made of a weaker nylon blend in 2019 models, has anyone else tried just swapping that one part instead of replacing the whole ice maker assembly?

3 comments

3 Comments

wright.jesse2mo agoMost Upvoted

I dug through a bin of ice maker parts and found about 15 of those nylon gears from 2019 models.

iris_jones892mo ago

honestly i'd rather just swap the whole assembly for like 40 bucks and be done with it. those nylon gears are a pain to dig out and you never know if the rest of the unit is gonna fail a month later anyway. plus if you buy a new assembly you get a warranty, not worth the hassle of saving 20 bucks.

hollyramirez16d ago

Yeah that "not worth the hassle of saving 20 bucks" line really hits me. I feel like that's how a lot of stuff goes now, not just appliances. You try to fix one little part and next thing you know you're three hours deep and still haven't solved it. And honestly with how cheaply things are made these days, swapping the whole thing feels like the safer bet even if it stings a little. It's like the whole world is designed to make you replace instead of repair.