The answer first
On the RA group a warm cabinet with an audible compressor points first at heat rejection — if the condenser cannot shed heat to the room, the refrigerant never condenses and nothing gets cold however long the unit runs. The seal is the second place to look and the evaporator the third. That order is set by what you can inspect without opening the cabinet.
The observable symptoms
- It stopped cooling within a day or two of being moved — Clearance, level and a knocked control account for most faults that appear on that timescale.
- The back or the side of the cabinet is hot rather than warm — The condenser is trying to shed heat into air that is not moving past it.
- Cold at the bottom of the cabinet and warm at the top — Air is stratifying because nothing is moving it, which is the fan question rather than the refrigerant question.
- NEAR MISS — only the ice is soft and everything else is fine — A freezer section that is merely too warm while the fridge section is right is a control or damper question, not a cooling failure.
What it usually turns out to be, in order
- Condenser coil choked, or no clearance around the cabinet — Heat leaves the refrigerant at the condenser, and a coil packed with dust or a cabinet pushed tight into a recess cannot do it. First on this family because it needs nothing taken apart — on a cabinet this size it is a look and a listen, and excluding it costs less than five minutes.
- Internal vents blocked by how the cabinet is packed — Cold reaches the fresh-food section through a small number of openings, and a box pushed against one of them starves everything downstream. Second on this family: it produces the same complaint as the cause above it, so the two have to be separated before either is acted on.
- Thermostat, sensor or control set wrong or reading wrong — A dial knocked to its warmest position, or a sensor reading colder than the cabinet really is, both stop the machine asking for cold. Third: common enough on refrigeration generally, but on a cabinet of this size the two above it account for most of what walks in the door.
Work through it in this order
- Where to begin on RA models — Three of the causes above can be excluded without a tool, and this order puts every one of them ahead of anything that needs the cabinet moved or a panel off.
- Look at the condenser and at the clearance around the cabinet — Dust on the coil and a tight recess produce the same result, and both are visible without a tool.
- Empty the cabinet enough to see its vents — Anything hard against a vent or against the rear wall is a candidate before any part is suspected.
- Check the setting, then watch whether the machine cycles — Set it to the middle of the range and see whether the compressor responds within a few minutes.
Before any panel comes off
Safety
Unplug the appliance or switch off its breaker before removing any panel; a capacitor can hold a charge after the power is off. Nothing on this page requires the sealed system to be opened, and nothing on it should be read as permission to do so: the tubing is under pressure, and cutting or unbrazing it is licensed work with licensed tools.
Models in the RA family
Reference| Model number | Family key |
|---|---|
| RA10X0W-IS | avanti:refrigerator:ra |
| RA10X1B-IS | avanti:refrigerator:ra |
| RA10X3S-IS | avanti:refrigerator:ra |
| RA3106WT | avanti:refrigerator:ra |
| RA3116BT | avanti:refrigerator:ra |
| RA3136SST | avanti:refrigerator:ra |
| RA31B** | avanti:refrigerator:ra |
| RA31B0W | avanti:refrigerator:ra |
| RA31B1B | avanti:refrigerator:ra |
| RA31B3S | avanti:refrigerator:ra |
| RA32J0W | avanti:refrigerator:ra |
| RA32J1B | avanti:refrigerator:ra |
| RA32J3S | avanti:refrigerator:ra |
| RA45B3S | avanti:refrigerator:ra |
| RA7306WT | avanti:refrigerator:ra |
| RA7306WT-IS | avanti:refrigerator:ra |
| RA730B0W | avanti:refrigerator:ra |
| RA7316PST | avanti:refrigerator:ra |
| RA7316PST-IS | avanti:refrigerator:ra |
| RA731B1B | avanti:refrigerator:ra |
| RA7326BT | avanti:refrigerator:ra |
| RA7326BT-IS | avanti:refrigerator:ra |
| RA733B3S | avanti:refrigerator:ra |
| RA75**** | avanti:refrigerator:ra |
| RA75V** | avanti:refrigerator:ra |
| RA75V0W | avanti:refrigerator:ra |
| RA75V1B | avanti:refrigerator:ra |
| RA75V3S | avanti:refrigerator:ra |
When this stops being owner work
Call once the owner-side checks above are clean and the cabinet is still wrong. Call without finishing the list if the fault is on the sealed system — if you can see oil at the compressor or at a tubing joint, or you smell burning — because oil outside the tubing means the system is open, and every hour the unit runs after that costs more to put right.
Nearest pages for this model group
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