I have a 20+ year old Kenmore fridge/freezer. It's been a champ - been in my detached non-AC garage for probably 10 years now on beer and surplus frozen meat duty.

Anyway, recently it is just not cooling well. But it isn't dead. The fridge/freezer both seem to be degraded similar amounts - fridge feels like 50-55 deg, freezer maybe 40 deg. So not good enough for duty but not like it totally died. It's making no bad noises or any other indications of a problem. I obviously don't want to spend much money to try and fix this, but any simple things I can check to see if its salvageable? If it were dead I wouldn't even ask.

Thanks!

I had a 15 year old Frigidaire that was rock solid but same thing happened. The fan on the condensor coil got clogged up with crap from the garage and quit. I stuck a fan I had in front to force air under it and it started cooling. Might give that a try. I found a fan online and replaced it. Ran another 6-7 years and made 3 moves before I gave it away.

I agree on a good coil cleaning.

Look at the door gaskets and see if they are performing. A bad gasket or a partially open door can cause the freezer coil to ice over.

I had a partially closed door. Unloaded the unit and unplugged it for a day to defrost. Wiped out the water, Turned back on and it returned to normal.

Just a few suggestions after you clean the coils:

1. Check to make sure the fans run. You'll probably have one in the freezer compartment behind the louvered panel, and one in the back blowing over the compressor and/or coils;

2. If it's not defrosting (defrost timer) the evaporator coil in the freezer compartment that coil may be frozen up and blocking the fan from spinning;

3. How about the thermostat? If it's not calling for the compressor to run when it needs to (can you hear it running all the time?) that's a pretty easy fix to replace;

and,

4. If you're hard-core and ready to throw it away anyway, buy a clamp-on refrigerant valve and charge some (probably R-134A) refrigerant to see if cooling improves. It won't take much as those are small systems. If the leak is tiny a small charge up may last you quite a while.

Do a full defrost and see if that fixes it. Yes, this is the 'did you try turning it off and on' for fridges.