Fixing a broken ice maker

04/19

Last night around 8pm I’d finally had enough. The contempt for my icemaker had reached it’s tipping point and it had been days since a new batch of icecubes were birthed. Before I go too far, all I wanted was enough ice to make a proper martini. All of the major players were there: the huge and awesome spanish olives, lemons and limes sat at the ready to sacrifice themselves as “twists”, and the vodka? Belvedere, cold, and plenty of it. I follow Winston Churchill’s recipe for a perfect martini with one exception, I replace the gin with vodka. For those who don’t know Churchill’s recipe calls for 3 parts British gin and one look at the bottle of vermouth that sits dusty on the other side of the room.

Like many of the amazing plans before this one the precipice of greatness centers around the pursuit of a good drink. The thing standing in the way of all of this was the GLACIER in the freezer, one solid 6lb block of oddly formed ice sat in the cube collection bin. A little backstory, I’d known that something was wrong with the icemaker the moment that I’d moved into my new place. Basically it never stopped making cubes, EVER. Which was fine because I moved in during the summer and without any sort of air conditioning I could pretty much keep pace with the machine. Both fall and winter pass with little annoyance but incrementally the problem got worse and worse. Fast forward to 8pm last night, where I sat wanting a tasty beverage and the only ice in the house was the cinder block sitting in the freezer. DAMNIT!

Under my breath I whispered “I’m gonna fix you” in a voice that wreaked of contempt and anger.

The tear down began by chipping away at the ice that connected the icemaker to the bin, once it was freed I could work on heating up a socket to melt the ice that covered the screws. After finally getting what I thought were all of the screws I realized that there was one in a spot that was completely not visible. Using Rin’s compact mirror in McGuyver like fashion I managed to get the last screw out. Once apart, I went to looking at how the assembly works and realized that the stopper pin (the thing that works the arm that tells the icemaker to stop) had broken. To replace the pin I had the clever idea to heat up a nail on the stove and push it through the plastic. Woohoo! A few cancerous fumes later I was putting everything back together. About an hour later the fridge was back to making ice AND stopping on command. WIN.