Part · Viking built-in refrigeration
What the start relay and overload do on a Viking refrigerator — and how they fail
In one sentence
Where your unit has them, these two small parts get the compressor turning and shut it down if it cannot, which is why a click every few minutes usually points here rather than at the pump. — Viking Repair Denver Pros, (720) 903-2603
What it does
A compressor motor cannot ease itself into motion. It needs a shove of extra current for a fraction of a second, then it needs that help taken away again, and where your unit uses a discrete part rather than an inverter drive, the start relay is what provides and removes it. The overload protector sits beside it doing the opposite job: it watches how hard the motor pulls and cuts the supply when the draw stays too high for too long, which saves a stalled compressor from cooking itself.
How it fails
The commonest ending is a relay whose contacts have burnt or whose internals have shaken loose. The start is not delivered properly, the motor stalls, and the overload does what it exists to do — it cuts the power. A few minutes later everything is cool enough to try again. That loop is the click, pause, click pattern people describe from two rooms away, and it can run all night without producing any cooling.
An overload can also fail on its own account, opening when nothing is wrong or staying shut when something is. The first leaves a cabinet running in short useless bursts. The second removes a safety margin, which is reason enough to deal with the noise rather than live alongside it.
What makes this worth reading is the price of confusing the two. Identical clicking comes from a compressor that has genuinely seized, and the difference between that and a small part at the end of its life is a meter reading, not a guess. Those readings are taken before anything is named, and the cheap answer is the one hoped for.
Can you check it yourself?
No — and this is why.
No. Both sit in the machinery compartment on live terminals, tight against a compressor that stays hot long after it stops. There is a listening job instead: count how long the cabinet stays quiet between clicks, and note whether the light and display are affected while it happens.
Repair band
Quoted after the diagnosis, not before it.
No configured band covers this work. It is small external hardware, changed without breaking into the sealed loop, so the price comes out of the diagnosis and is told to you before a part is ordered. Viking Repair Denver Pros, (720) 903-2603.
Follow-up questions
Every Viking built-in has a start relay, then?
Not every one. Some compressors are driven by an inverter board that ramps the motor up electronically and needs no separate starting part at all, and on those the same symptom points somewhere else entirely. Which arrangement your cabinet uses is established on the visit, not assumed over the telephone.
Is the clicking doing damage while I wait?
Each failed attempt is a surge of current through a motor that is not turning, so repeated cycling is hard on the one part nobody wants to replace. Meanwhile the food is warming. If the cabinet is clicking and not getting cold, switch it off at the breaker and ring (720) 903-2603.
Symptoms it causes
If your unit is doing one of these, this part is on the list of things that get tested.
- Written by
- Clifford Nakamura
- Role
- Service technician — controls and intermittent faults
- Last checked