The short answer
On a True Refrigeration refrigerator, this symptom is almost never a dead compressor. It is airflow: something is stopping cold air from moving, or stopping heat from leaving. A cabinet in a working kitchen is opened many times an hour by people who are not thinking about the door, so load and sealing outrank component failure.
What you are actually seeing
- The compressor runs and runs without ever stopping — It never reaches its setting, so it never switches off.
- The outside of the cabinet is hot to the touch at the sides or back — Heat is being made and not shed.
- NEAR MISS — only the ice maker has stopped while the food is cold — That is an ice production fault and it is covered on its own page.
Causes, most likely first on this refrigerator
- Door not sealing — a tired gasket, a sagging door, or a shelf holding it open — Ranked first on True Refrigeration: in a working kitchen the door is opened many times an hour by people carrying things, so the gasket, the hinge and the closer take the whole load. On this one, remember that the door is opened constantly by people carrying things, so load discipline outranks parts.
- A defrost system that has stopped running, icing the evaporator solid — Second: the ice builds behind a panel where nobody looks, so the owner sees warmth and never sees the cause.
- Thermistor or control reading the cabinet wrong — Third: it is uncommon, it cannot be confirmed without instruments, and it looks identical from outside to the causes above it.
- A fault on the sealed refrigerant system — Bottom of the list, which is the useful part: commercial decks are built heavy and are usually the last thing to fail, which is exactly why it sits last.
Check in this order, and why
- First — close the door on a sheet of paper at several points round the seal — If the paper slides out freely anywhere, that part of the seal is not working and the cabinet is fighting the room.
- Then — look at the back wall of the freezer compartment for a sheet of frost — A sheet rather than a light dusting confirms the airflow story and rules out the sealed system.
- Only then — feel whether the condenser is warm and listen for the compressor — Only worth doing once everything above is clean, because it changes nothing an owner can act on, which is why it comes after everything above it.
What an owner can safely check
- Test the gasket all the way round with a strip of paper — Shut the door on a strip of paper and pull. Repeat at top, bottom and both sides. Free movement anywhere means a leak there.
Tools: paperAbout 10 min
- Empty the cabinet, switch it off at the wall and leave the doors open for a full manual defrost — If cold comes back afterwards and then fades again over the following days, the defrost system is the cause and not the compressor.
About 45 min
- STOP before testing anything electrical with the power on — The checks above are all cold checks. Anything that needs power applied is where an owner check ends.
Before you open anything
Safety
Unplug the cabinet or switch off its breaker before you take any panel off — a capacitor can hold a charge after the power is off. Do not tape, wedge or otherwise defeat a door switch to keep a fan running while you look: the switch is there so that a hand in the cabinet cannot meet a spinning blade. Refrigerant work is licensed work; nothing on the sealed system is an owner job.
When it stops being an owner job
Call once the air path, the gasket and the fan check are all clean, or straight away if the cabinet is silent, if the compressor buzzes and stops repeatedly, or if you can see oil around the tubing at the back. Oil outside the tubing means the sealed system is open, and every hour it runs after that costs more to put right.
Nearest pages of this class
What this page does not cover
This page is written for the True Refrigeration refrigerator as a class, not for one family or one model line. Where a family-specific page exists for your unit it is linked above and it is the more specific answer. Deliberately not here: part numbers, wiring colours, torque figures and any measured value, all of which differ by family.
Lead Appliance Repair Technician · 12 years experience
Experienced technician with 12 years specializing in washing machine and dryer repairs across all major brands.
