What this usually is
An Arctic Wind ABMN refrigerator that has stopped making ice is worth triaging in the bin before anything is opened. The roster covers one base number, ABMN171E, carried twice in the parts data. Where a listing on this roster has no factory ice maker fitted at all, the whole of this page reduces to the water supply and the freezer temperature, so confirm what your own cabinet actually has first.
Symptoms on these models
- Hollow or undersized cubes — Water is arriving but not enough of it. Points at fill volume, a partly restricted line or a saddle valve that has never fully opened.
- The dispenser motor runs but nothing comes out — Cubes have fused in the bin or the chute is bridged. Empty the bin completely and listen again before condemning anything.
- NEAR MISS - no ice and the whole cabinet is warm — That is a cooling fault, and the ice maker stopping is a symptom of it. Read the cooling page for this family.
Ranked causes
- Shut-off arm or bin sensor reading full — Ranked first. Owners rearrange a freezer, something leans on the arm, and production stops silently. There is no fault code and no noise, which is exactly why it goes unfound for weeks.
- Water inlet valve failing or partly blocked — The valve meters the fill. A partly blocked screen gives short fills and hollow cubes; a failed coil gives nothing at all. It sits at the back of the cabinet rather than in the freezer, which makes it a different job from an ice maker swap.
- Fill tube frozen or ice bridged in the mould — At this position because it produces a distinctive pair of symptoms - shrinking cubes and a sheet of ice under the bin - that no other entry on this list produces together.
- Ice maker module, motor or thermostat failed — Ranked last. The pattern that genuinely points here is a mould that fills, freezes correctly and then never harvests, with the freezer temperature and the water supply both confirmed good.
- Body: The order here follows the water and the temperature, not the parts catalogue. On the ABMN roster everything above the module is cheaper to test than the module is to buy, which is the entire argument for working down rather than in.
Check in this order, and why
- Empty the bin completely and look at the shut-off arm — A raised arm or a frosted sensor window stops production silently. This is the single commonest finding and it costs nothing.
- Put a thermometer in the freezer and wait — A freezer holds food safely at 0 degrees Fahrenheit or below and an ice maker needs the same. A hand cannot measure this.
- Body: Each step here rules out a branch. The roster is one number series, so the layout below holds across every listing on this page.
Before you open anything
Safety
Unplug the appliance or switch off its breaker before removing the ice maker or any freezer panel; a capacitor can hold a charge after the power is off. Wear gloves: the mould edges and the evaporator fins behind the rear liner are both sharper than they look, and never chip at bridged ice with a screwdriver.
Models in the ABMN family — This page generalizes over every listing in the roster below; where the models diverge for this fault the text says so, and where it does not, they behave alike. A starred entry in the table is the same base number recorded a second way in the parts data; treat it as the same platform for this fault unless your own parts diagram says otherwise.
Reference| Model number | Family key |
|---|---|
| ABMN171E | arctic-wind:refrigerator:abmn |
| ABMN171E* | arctic-wind:refrigerator:abmn |
When to call a technician
Call when the checks above are clean and the cabinet still makes no ice, because on the ABMN roster the next step is either a pressurised fitting or the module itself. Call sooner if you find water where it should not be, and close the supply valve before you make the call.
Other pages for this family
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