Whirlpool Refrigerator Door Seal surface is HOT.

If the air flow on the condenser under the fridge is too low, the hot gas won't be cooled enough before it goes to the door jamb to stop condensation. Remove the plastic cover under the doors and look at the condenser (tube/wire thing underneath). If it is clogged with fluff, get a vacuum and nozzle and give it a good clean so the air can pass through. Other than that, your condenser fan may have stopped.

If it is too hot to touch the condenser fan is not working to cool the condenser and compressor. I put a electric fan to behind the refridgerator bottom as temporary fix. I will troubleshoot if other parts of the refrigerator is causing the fan not to start. Jimmy

Hey Jeff,
I discovered the same problem...albeit long after yours. Due to one of the answers to your problem, I was able to resolve it after having pulled out all of our food to transport to another refrigerator/freezer. The solution was to pull off the front bottom grill and vacuum the radiator of all collected lint and debris. It is amazing how fast the problem developed when the radiator has had to be covered for years. It became hot during the period of a day.
This forum(FixYa) saved me a lot of money! Thanks! Hope this helps someone else! Kevin

Vacuum the radiator under the grill especially if you have pets that shed. 5mins later it's cooler.

Had same problem on Whirlpool standard fridge. Fan in back wasn't spinning, but did when I gave it a push. Vacuumed out the radiator and found a big piece of insulation back there that probably had been stuck in the fan. Seems to be working fine now and that strip isn't hot.

You should get a panda because they can fix everything. Also, for free they make bamboo shoot smoothies while fixing the refridgerator. You can get a free quote on how much this will cost. You can get a panda out to fix your refridgerator from Panda Inc.

Hello Jeff;

My name is Peter. I am a retired field service refrigeration technician. I read all of the helpful answers. If the separator between the freezer & fresh food section is warm, the you have a dirty bottom condenser coil. The cleaning of this coil can affect your cooling by as much as 40 degrees F.

If the separator feels hot, then it is a condenser fan problem. At times the condenser fan blade will have interference problems due to the terrible light weight housing, and requires you to bend the frame to free the fan blade. Other times the condenser cooling fan gets stuck from normal grit and grime. When this happens you need to rotate the fan blade. If this is the case, the fan motor is starting to go bad.

Ok, Lets check it out. Pull the refrigerator out to the point where you can easily get behind it. (You want to protect your floor, refrigerators are heavy. Get a piece for of 1/16" Sheet plastic from Lowe's or else where. It should be about 3' X 4'. ) This is called a slider. Take the plastic sheet, place on the floor in front of your unit. Push back on your unit and push the slider in.

Remove, the front grill or toe plate at the bottom front of your unit.

When you look under the front, you will see two hex head screws on each side. These raise and lower your unit wheels. The lower screw is for the front wheels, upper right is for the back wheels.
These are 3/8' or 5/15' hex heads. You need to turn these screws clockwise to raise. You need to raise the wheels to move your unit.

Ok, the unit is ready to move. With the plastic slider in place pull the unit forward until there is enough room for you to easily get behind the unit.

Now, unplug the unit. Remove the lower cover (several screws).
On the right hand side is your condenser fan motor. Try to turn the fan blade. If it does not move because of interference, bend the lite frame to free it up. Interference is you problem. Turn the fan blade until it is free. Plug your unit back in, observe if the fan runs.

If it does not, we need to replace it. If it does not we should replace it, lack of Amps.

Transom between fridge and freezer is usually haeted to stop condensation when you open freezer door. suspect you have no fault

Thank you! Saved a lot of time and money. Found dead mouse laying on fan blade causing it to stop!

If anybody else is having this problem it's not the gaskets that are heating up it's the strip between the fridge and freezer where the gaskets close into that's getting hot from either a clogged condenser coil that should be cleaned at least once a year or the condenser fan motor isn't spinning either from something stuck in it or the motor is bad,if you ever find that the condenser fan motor is bad you can stick a window fan behind the machine with the bottom rear panel off where the compressor is and blow the fan onto compressor and on the coil and it will take the place of the damaged fan motor that's there so you don't loose your food because the compressor will start to overheat and either stop working or it will get damaged and you'll have to replace the machine.hope this helps someone out

Thanks for the tips! I have the same problem (hot separator between freezer and fridge). I took the back cover off and the condenser fan was running fine. I also vacuumed the radiator at the bottom front of the fridge. There is still dust inside the radiator that was very hard to reach. How do you guys completely clean the coils? The separator bar is still very hot. Please help!

We purchased a used whirlpool side by side refrigerator. Hooked it up and it works great but almost immediately we noticed that the strip between the doors seemed really hot. I pulled it out and removed the cardboard panel at bottom to see if I could see something wrong. The coil was a little dirty so I blew it off with my compressor. I saw that the fan was running but something wasn't right. I unplugged refrigerator and noticed that the fan blades were actually bent the wrong angle and instead of blowing air toward the compressor it was blowing away from compressor. I saw that the blades are very flimsy so I started bending them the right way. As soon as I did this the strip was no longer hot. The blades can only be bent one way, if bent the wrong way the blades will hit the outer housing. Hope this helps

The metal piece between our fridge and freezer started getting really hot today - where the door seals sit. Based upon the above comments, we moved the fridge out, removed the rear panel at the bottom, and found the condenser fan had a blade that was rubbing on the housing, preventing it from moving. We bent it back a bit, and now the fan runs just fine. The metal strip in front cooled off in just a few minutes, very easy fix thankfully!

My water line cracked under the fridge and caused the insulation/cardboard under the compressor to swell and thus block the fan. So the heat was never dissipated. So my fridge had those same hotspots. I pulled out the damp insulation when repairing the water lines and it freed up the fan to run. The hotspots are now gone.

It shouldnt be that hot that the seal becomes soft and flexable. normally comressor should pass hot gas through condenser first to get rid of majority of heat then to go to the mullon heaters(outer frame). By this time it would be a lot cooler.