When the door light flickered and then failed my first thought was a burnt out LED, so on our return home I started searching for a replacement. Guess what, you can't Just buy the LED unit, the only available spare is a complete catch assembly at about £60!
Thinking daylight robbery I decided to open it up and explore.
The unit comes off pretty easily, if a little fiddly but basically unclip the cover, unplug the mini connector and remove two screws. The unit is then held together by the darker grey U shape part that acts as the door retainer when closed. As you can see from the first photo these are pretty flimsy parts.
Also, note the little bite out of this, more later on that.
A quick test by feeding 12v direct to the LED and hey presto, it lit up, proving the problem must be the little switch.
So I prised it apart to see if that was fixable?
It looked OK as far as I could tell but obviously my butchery had ruined it anyway. So I turned to flea Bay and rapidly found countless offers of replacements that looked similar.
I bought this one, it was basically a pound each and available in a few days (not waiting for a delivery from China). I got some spares as well.
It's been a while since I've done any soldering but the trusty iron still worked and I was able to unsolder the old switch and solder on the new one, having snipped off some of the extra long lever.
This is the various parts laid out after disassembly, and before connecting up the new switch.
Happily it was then operating perfectly.
I mentioned the little 'missing tooth' on the door catch part, this is from wear and tear; mainly I realised because we routinely close the door by just pushing it like the home fridge. It's a fairly fragile part and obviously is being worn down in this way.
I've now rebuilt this with filler and hope it lasts especially as we are both now going to try to remember to use the release button when closing the door.
So all now rebuilt and working as it should, and at a unit cost of just over a quid.
BTW, ours is the RMD 8505.
When searching for the replacement door catch unit we got various warnings that 'they were likely to be slightly different so use the makers codes' and nothing else. That is cobblers, if it looks identical it will be, and even if your door is hinged on the other side the unit can be adapted by moving the switch to the opposite nibs.
Thinking daylight robbery I decided to open it up and explore.
The unit comes off pretty easily, if a little fiddly but basically unclip the cover, unplug the mini connector and remove two screws. The unit is then held together by the darker grey U shape part that acts as the door retainer when closed. As you can see from the first photo these are pretty flimsy parts.
Also, note the little bite out of this, more later on that.
A quick test by feeding 12v direct to the LED and hey presto, it lit up, proving the problem must be the little switch.
So I prised it apart to see if that was fixable?
It looked OK as far as I could tell but obviously my butchery had ruined it anyway. So I turned to flea Bay and rapidly found countless offers of replacements that looked similar.
I bought this one, it was basically a pound each and available in a few days (not waiting for a delivery from China). I got some spares as well.
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It's been a while since I've done any soldering but the trusty iron still worked and I was able to unsolder the old switch and solder on the new one, having snipped off some of the extra long lever.
This is the various parts laid out after disassembly, and before connecting up the new switch.
Happily it was then operating perfectly.
I mentioned the little 'missing tooth' on the door catch part, this is from wear and tear; mainly I realised because we routinely close the door by just pushing it like the home fridge. It's a fairly fragile part and obviously is being worn down in this way.
I've now rebuilt this with filler and hope it lasts especially as we are both now going to try to remember to use the release button when closing the door.
So all now rebuilt and working as it should, and at a unit cost of just over a quid.
BTW, ours is the RMD 8505.
When searching for the replacement door catch unit we got various warnings that 'they were likely to be slightly different so use the makers codes' and nothing else. That is cobblers, if it looks identical it will be, and even if your door is hinged on the other side the unit can be adapted by moving the switch to the opposite nibs.
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