Maytag Bottom-Freezer Repair in Placentia: Compressor Start Relay
The Call from the Bradford Neighborhood
The customer called from a 1970s ranch in the Bradford neighborhood, off Bradford Avenue near Tri-City Park. He had a Maytag bottom-freezer fridge in the garage — the family’s secondary fridge, used mostly for beverages and overflow during gatherings. The unit had stopped cooling completely a day before, and the freezer had thawed out enough to drip water onto the garage floor. He’d unplugged it to keep the puddle from growing.
When the customer plugged it back in for me to listen, I heard the compressor try to start — a brief hum, a click, and then a long silence — about every 5 minutes. That hum-click-silence pattern is the unmistakable sound of a Maytag (or any compressor, really) with a failed start relay. The compressor windings are good; the relay that gives them the kick they need to start spinning is shot.
Inside the Back Panel
Pulled the rear lower access panel off the back of the unit. The start relay on this Maytag is a small black plastic component mounted directly to the compressor body, with a separate overload protector that piggybacks on it. The relay was visibly burned on one terminal — slight scorch mark on the plastic, and a brown discoloration on the metal contact. That’s a classic relay-failure visual.
I unplugged the relay from the compressor terminals and tested it with the multimeter. The PTC inside (the positive-temperature-coefficient device that does the actual start work) was open. Not coming back. Time for a swap.
Compressor windings I checked next — common-to-start was 12 ohms, common-to-run was 4 ohms, start-to-run was 16 ohms. Those numbers told me the compressor itself was healthy and just needed a working relay to fire it up. If the windings had been open or shorted I’d be writing a different post.
The Fix
Maytag compressor start relays for this bottom-freezer platform run about $35 in parts — universal PTC relay with the right amp rating, plus the overload protector pair. I had the kit on the truck. Install is a 15-minute job: pull the old relay, snap on the new one, replace the overload, button up the access panel.
Plugged the unit back in. Compressor fired up on the first try with a clean run-start sequence. Within 30 seconds I had cold discharge line and proper suction-line frost migration starting. By the time I’d finished writing up the invoice, the freezer compartment was already pulling down and the cabinet light was on a colder feel.
I told the customer to give it 24 hours before reloading frozen product and to check the temperature in the morning with a thermometer in a glass of water in the fridge section. He texted me the next afternoon that it was holding 37°F up top and 0°F in the freezer.
Garage Fridges in Placentia
A big share of the Maytag and Whirlpool service calls I run in Placentia are garage fridges — the family’s backup unit, used hard in summer for drinks and overflow. Garage fridges have a tough life: ambient temperatures swing from 50°F in winter to 110°F+ on August afternoons, and that thermal cycling beats up compressor relays harder than a kitchen install ever would. Start relays are a wear part on any garage fridge, and they fail more often than people expect.
For the full brand rundown, see our Maytag refrigerator service page.
What It Cost
Diagnostic was $65. Start relay and overload kit plus labor came in at about $165 total. 3-month warranty on parts and labor.
If you’re anywhere in Placentia and need refrigerator service, we cover the whole city seven days a week. We work on Maytag, Whirlpool, LG, Samsung, and the other common residential brands all over the Placentia neighborhoods.