PSA: started testing defrost heaters with a multimeter first and it saved me a callback in Mesa
Last week I picked up a fridge job in Mesa where the guy swore his freezer was fine but the bottom was warm. My first move for a long time was just yanking the control board and swapping it, which is about a 45 minute job and a $180 part. This time I put my meter on the defrost heater instead and got no reading at all, open circuit, done in 4 minutes. Turned out the old heater was cracked and the board was perfectly fine the whole time. If I had gone with my gut I would have eaten the cost of a second visit and lost the customer's trust. Anybody here still pulling boards first on these, or has everyone moved to checking the heater and bi-metal before anything else?