Hi Folks -- what a great forum, I stumbled in here searching for replacement parts. I have a somewhat old (8 year) GTS22KBMBRWW fridge. It's used as a second fridge. Has worked great for years, and at some point today, something went wrong and the GFI it is plugged into was tripped. (It's been running fine here for 3 years).

I'm great with computer repair/etc., but know nothing about fridges. The first thing I did was simply reset the GFI, and it popped right away. The fridge seemed to make a pop sound as well. I took off the cover off to expose the main "motherboard" -- of course I don't know what I'm looking for. I once again reset the GFI watching this, and sure enough, a very small but obvious pop came from the board -- no sparks or anything, but I could've sworn I saw a small amount of smoke.

EDIT: One potentially important piece of information: this only happens when kicking the compressor on. If I turn the temp dials all the way down, it will stay on just fine (light inside, etc.) ... it's when I turn on the temp knob and it kicks in that causes the pop.

If I had to guess, the culprit is one of the larger capacitors on the bottom of the board. Knowing nothing about refrigerator repair, I can replace the board ($130), I can replace the capacitors, I can pay a GE tech to come out and tell me, or I can replace/ditch the whole fridge.

Obviously I don't expect everyone to know for sure what the problem is, but is it common for just this board to be the problem? I hate to replace the whole board only to find out that's not the root of the problem. Up until now, it kept temp right on, no problems.

Thanks much for your advice!

The pro's say refrigerators can easily get contaminated with messy food spils which cause a ground current so they do not reccomend plugging in a fridge. to a ground fault outlet.
You still might have a compressor ground short, so this will show up when you plug it into a "normal" outlet.

I had a customer that insisted on having his refrigerator on a ground fault after I told him just to remove it from the ground fault. He was like you and said it has always been on the ground fault and has never given him any problems.

What I did was started unplugging devices on the refrigerator until the ground fault wouldn’t trip anymore. On that refrigerator it was the icemaker.

The problem is that sometimes the compressor can trip the ground fault when starting and not necessarily be anything wrong with it. Or the compressor may be bad in which case it won’t work on or off the ground fault as Richappy stated.

In your case the main board may be bad but I would try it off the ground fault and if it worked I would leave it off the ground fault and not worry about it.

I don’t know about the local codes but the electricians around here wire the kitchen with all ground faults except the receptacle that the refrigerator plugs into.
Refrigerator repair guide

I spent some time tinkering with the fridge -- the compressor only has 2 leads on it, one orange and one black. Orange appears to be directly from the line (split right after it enters the housing near the compressor) and black connects to a molex that I would guess runs to the top of the fridge.

Most people mention 3 wires as typical on compressors -- line, start, common. Since I don't have that, I would guess for the time being that black is load from the main board, and orange is common?

Thanks applianceman!

OK, more info. Once I took off the overload and relay, I saw the 3 terminals on the compressor. It was in a triangle -- top to bottom left, 6 ohms, top to bottom right, 4 ohms, and bottom together about 10 ohms. No continuity to ground.

I took off the main control board and was a bit surprised as to what I saw underneath what I believe is a relay. Excuse the blury photos -- cell phone picts. Here's the front:



And now the back (inverted, so the relay is on the top):



Obviously the board is likely shot, but I'm wondering if the board is just a result of another problem...