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Comment by bengale | Hacker News Reader

> there is no light in the fridge (but it still works)

I normally find these types of appliances make parts readily available. I just replaced the locking mechanism on my washing machine for example, it was cheap and easy to order the parts I needed.

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YouTube has been a game changer for me. I’ve repaired my dishwasher, shower handle valve, refrigerator drain, replaced thermal paste in my laptop, all kinds of things. It seems like there’s a decent video for everything, and some random website (or eBay) selling parts.

My experience:

- no service/troubleshooting manual/videos available online

- no way to identify what replacement part to buy unless you're in the know already

- getting access to locking mechanism looked like it would lead to washing machine completely falling apart structurally (there was a somewhat hidden "safety" screw that looked like a last defense against people removing the front panel just by removing the apparent screws and hurting themselves)

So I bailed on this without a proper guide on safe disassembly procedure.

Thankfully wiggling the connector to the locking switch made the lock and thus the washing machine work again, after a first failure since 15 years ago or whatever. It looked just fine inside (surprisingly). Vibrations probably don't allow much dirt to accumulate. No obvious rusting/leakage. I was surprised.

Sometimes the manufacturer makes it difficult. Replaced the light bulb in my parents' oven last week. The manufacturer only sold the bulb with the entire (expensive) housing as well. A bulb! We managed to find a supplier with a compatible bulb (which meant a quick swap).

I'd like to think there was a reason the manufacturer wanted the entire housing replaced?

My guess is that some product manager somewhere realized that if they only offered the bulb housing assembly they could make a bit higher profit margins

It depends. A lot of modern fridges use LEDs and have control boards driving them that cost hundreds of dollars. If the LEDs are out, the likelihood is not that the LEDs are dead, but that something much more expensive failed.

The prices on those controllers are totally absurd, too. You end up paying four hundred bucks for something with a sub-$20 BOM cost.

They do the slow fade-in effect when you open the door. That's got to cost something.

I, mistakenly, bought the refrigerator with LED lighting because I hated how old-style bulbs would turn on slowly in the cold. LED lighting should be instant I thought. Oh no, totally on purpose it was made slow.

PWM is trivial to implement, but you can sell it for real money as a feature. Or, in this case, a "feature". Not that it wouldn't be easier to just wire the door switch into the power rail for the internal lighting, but then it wouldn't also be able to play a cute jingle and tweet Elon Musk when the door opens.

Regarding slow starts - not that it's terribly useful to mention now, I grant, but most incandescent appliance bulbs can be replaced with compatible and much less temperature-sensitive LED ones these days.

My guess is that the LEDs are in series on a strip, and one burnt out.

The fridge manufacturer probably assumed it’ll always run cold (it’s a fridge right?) and overdrove them too hard to get just as much light out of 20 LEDs instead of 24.

Could bridge the faulty LED with solder to buy some time, and find a donor LED from a “burnt out” LED light bulb or whatevs and solder it in.

Pretty sure these are usually standard bulbs ...

Not modern fridges.

That trend has become ubiquitous: cars, laptops, phones...

Nothing is designed to be fixed at home anymore. If there were regulations that required it, we'd still have the same advanced tech, but it'd be repair friendly.

For example HP Elitebooks ond Dell business class laptops have most parts replaceable and the keyboard is secured by screws.

HP Pavilion gaming, ASUS ROG Strix and newer Macbooks have keyboards secured by melting topcase plastic pins or bolts so you can't easily replace keyboard, you need to replace the whole topcase.

And the keyboard is something which degrades by use and can easily be damaged by liquid...

Trust me I'm an engineer? But always happy to have HN debug my fridge, so here we go: turns out the light bulb, when replaced, keeps overheating and even metled the surrounding casing. Some electrical issue I'd have to take the fridge apart to debug. I might be unfair with this one though, it's a 20 year old fridge and is probably serviceable.

Keeps melting .. in a fridge ... it should never be on more than 30s at a time surely?

I guess you’ve tried a lower wattage bulb ...

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