Defrost Heater with Thermostat

Remove freezer contents, shelves, and interior back-panel. Melt all ice on freezer coolang coil with hair dryer. Be careful not to touch to coling fins on the coils with the hair dryeer since they damage easily. Unplug the old heater coil wire harness at the top of the coils. Gently remove the thermocouple clipped to the top coil. Gently remove the wires leading down to the heater coil at the bottom-back of the freezer. Remove the old heater by removing the two mounting screws. Install new heater by reversing the steps above.
Good luck.
Ps. When the heater coil fails the result is, both the freezer and refridgerator sides get warm and food spoils. A good indicator to watch for is frost building up in the freezer on the interior back-panel. I taped cheap thermometers in both side to help mointor the temperature in case it happens again.

After removing the 4 screws from the inside back panel of the freezer and setting a small heater with fan, on a small metal step ladder for about twenty minutes to defrost the freezer coils, it was a snap to remove the two small screws holding the burned out heater harness defrost assembly, and unplugging the wire harnesses to replace the burnt unit with a new one. Actual hands on time was about 5 minutes. Difficulty level, well... my wife did it and she is not mechanically inclined.

I had to defrost the freezer again before I could even start the replacement We unplub the old wiring harness took out two screws removed the old heater put in the new one replaced the srews and reconnected the harness we were done.

Removed the internal cover and used a hair drier to defrost the evaporator. Unpluged the conectorto the harnes. Placed new part in and pluged it in, replaced cover and tested.

The repair stories for this part are helpfull. The only problem I came accross was figuring out which part I needed to order. The parts diagram only showed one part labled 230, but when I used the drop down box to order the part there were 2 parts labled 230 for 2 diffrent prices. I called ge customer care and found out the less expencive part listed as 230 does not come with the wires etc. . The more expensive piece has the wire harness and every thing needed. I went with the more expensive part and it was a snap to install. . . .

First of all I'm 76 years old. The same thing happened 5 years before and I had a service man out to fix it. I did what he did. Unplug the heater from the harness and plug in the new heated.