To Repair an Ice Maker

My Dad was an engineer.  From what I understand, he was a really good engineer.  He loved to take things apart, find out how they worked, and put them back together again so that they were better than they had been before.

When Dad and my step mom (let's call her Mo) were living in Alexandria, their refrigerator/freezer had a gizmo that we'd never had on any refrigerator before: an ice maker.

This wasn't one of those ice makers that go through the door on a side by side fridge.

No, this was in one of those freezer on the top models.  The ice maker was mounted inside of the freezer, on the left side.

The catch all that caught the ice was underneath, and a sweeper bar would come across the top of the ice.  If the sweeper bar could fully extend, the ice maker would pop the ice cubes out of the tray and send them popping down into the catch all bin.  If the bar could not fully extend, then the ice cubes would remain in the tray until the bar could move all the way out.

Dad was really intrigued by the mechanisms involved in the entire process.

So, one Saturday morning, he took the entire thing apart and figured out how it worked.

He put it back together again, and he gave an extra little "tweak" to the mechanism, hoping that the sweeper bar would, instead of getting caught on one or two ice cubes, it would be able to push more of them out of it's way.  Proud of his work, Dad closed the freezer door and went outside to mow the lawn.

Now, Dad was an excellent engineer.  However, sometimes, his re-engineering of existing products didn't go quite the way he had anticipated.

Mo started making lunch, when she heard a strange sound from the freezer.  Thud, thud, thud, thud, and then the zzzzzzzzz of new water filling the ice cube tray.

Looking inside of the freezer, she noticed the ice cube tray was empty.  What had happened to the ice cubes?

Thinking that maybe it was just the sound of the tray refilling after Dad had been tinkering with it,she closed the freezer door and kept making lunch.

A while later, she heard it again.  "thud, thud, thud, thud, zzzzzzzzzz".  Curious about the thudding noise, she looked inside of the freezer.  Again, the ice cube tray was empty. 

"That's odd" she thought. 

Later that afternoon, when she heard the sweeper bar make the noise that indicate it's moving to check the ice level, she rushed to open the freezer door in order to see what was going on. And then, she saw it.

As soon as the sweeper bar was fully extended, the ice cubes shot out - and I mean SHOT OUT- of the ice cube tray, across the freezer, and hit the wall on the far right side of the freezer, where they dropped down onto the frozen vegetables.  Looking down, she saw a decent pile of ice on top of the frozen veggies.

When she and Dad sat down to dinner that night, Mo told Dad about the ice problem.

"I'll take care of it" he said.

Later that night, when Mo heard the sound of ice hitting the freezer wall again, she muttered unlawful things under her breath and walked into the kitchen, shouting at my Dad "I thought you said you were going to take care of the ice maker!"

"I did!" Dad shouted back.

She opened the door and looked inside of the freezer.  Sure enough, Dad had taken care of the ice maker.  He'd moved the catch all bin from directly under the ice maker to the right side of the freezer.  After the ice flew across the freezer and hit the far wall, it fell into the ice bin.

I swear to God this is true.  You can't make this stuff up!