Pre-repair planning saves time and money
By Sam Brown, Master Samurai Tech/Appliantology.org
All too often, when a tech encounters a weird problem in an appliance he resorts to throwing parts at it, hoping that one will do the trick. But it’s exactly this absence of any troubleshooting strategy that makes for more trips to the customer’s home, more callbacks, and therefore less profit.
It doesn’t have to be that way. The appliance repair department can be an extremely profitable part of the company. What makes all the difference is tech training. A tech who knows his stuff can employ real troubleshooting strategies to positively identify failures and fix them right the first time.
Let’s walk through a situation based on a real service call that demonstrates the point. Here’s the scenario: several different loads aren’t working on a refrigerator. The water and ice dispensers, the dispenser light and the freezer light are all inop. Wow, four different loads all happened to fail at the same time!? Crazy, right?
It is crazy. In fact, it’s almost impossible that four loads would fail simultaneously. A lesser tech might just throw up their hands and start slapping in new lights and dispenser parts. But a Master Samurai-trained tech will know that when you have multiple problems all at once you look for a common cause. They’ll also know that the best way to begin troubleshooting is to crack out the schematic and do some load analysis. That means identifying your loads of interest and figuring out how each gets its power source. In the case of a 120 VAC machine, that’s going to be line and neutral.
Here’s the schematic in question:

Whew, lots going on here! Here, I’ll help you find our four loads:

Ice dispenser motor, water dispenser valve, dispenser light, freezer light — all accounted for. Now’s when our tech would start tracing out how each gets its power supply. Let’s start with neutral.

That’s all well and good for neutral — most of our loads of interest share a hardwired neutral. The freezer light gets its neutral from the control board. So what about line? Let’s look at that freezer light first:

Aha! That’s how the freezer light gets line — from P5 pin 5 on the main control board. But what about the other loads? Well, if we flip that light interlock switch to its other position, here’s what we get:

Now we’re talking! As it turns out, all of our loads of interest get line from P5 pin 5. There’s our common element.
All that remains is to check if P5-5 is providing 120 VAC; an easy test that we can do right from the control board. If it is putting out that voltage, then we would move on to check the light interlock switch.
Without even driving to the customer’s home, the tech has already identified enough information to have a simple and effective troubleshooting strategy. With a couple of tests, he’ll be able to positively determine whether the board or the switch is the issue and proceed with the repair from there.
Want to train up your techs to troubleshoot like pros, cutting down on excessive trips and callbacks, and turning your service department into a profitable part of your business? Click here to check out our Core Appliance Repair Training course over at the Master Samurai Tech Academy. And be sure to use your BrandSource discount coupon, available in the Backroom, for 15% off your enrollment!

Sam Brown is “Professor of Appliance Repair Mastery” at BrandSource partner Master Samurai Tech (MST), an online training academy for appliance repair personnel, and is the administrator of its sister tech support site, Appliantology.org. For more information, email Sam at samuraitechhelp@gmail.com or call (603) 290-5516.