Hi John, turning the dial colder is the first thing everyone tries, and when it doesn’t help, it means the refrigerator can’t make or move enough cold air. Your Whirlpool GB2FHDXWQ04 is a French-door with the freezer at the bottom. On these, the freezer is where all the cold air is made, and a fan blows it up into the fridge. So the first question is:
Is the freezer still cold?
- Freezer is cold, fridge is warm: the cold air isn’t getting up to the fridge. Go to “Frost or fan problem” below.
- Both are warm: the fridge isn’t making cold at all. Go to “Both warm”.
Put a thermometer in a glass of water in the fridge and leave it overnight. You want 37°F in the fridge and 0°F in the freezer.
Frost or fan problem
Open the freezer and listen. You should hear a fan running behind the back panel while the fridge is running. Then look at that back panel:
- If you see frost or ice building on it, or the fan sounds like it’s scraping ice, the defrost system has failed. Ice has packed the coils and blocks the air. As a test, you can unplug the refrigerator for 24–48 hours with the doors open (food in coolers, towels on the floor). If it cools normally for a week or two and then goes warm again, that confirms it. The defrost heater, thermostat or control needs to be replaced.
- If there’s no fan noise, the evaporator fan motor may have failed.
Both warm
- Clean the condenser coils. On this model they’re behind the bottom grille in front, or behind the lower back panel. Dust and pet hair on the coils is one of the most common reasons for poor cooling, and a $10 coil brush and a vacuum fix it.
- With the fridge running, check that the condenser fan near the compressor at the bottom back is spinning.
- If the compressor clicks on and off every few minutes or is silent, call a technician. That points to the start relay or the compressor itself.
Is it worth fixing?
Your model is from around the late 2000s. A defrost part, fan or coil cleaning is a reasonable repair. If it turns out to be the compressor or a refrigerant leak, a new refrigerator usually makes more sense at this age.