I'm in the restaurant business and the other day my Manitowoc ( model #QY0214A ) was making a horrible screeching sound. In fact, it was so loud in the dining room that we had to shut it off and start rationing our ice supply.
Now the ice machine is only about 5-6 years old and I've taken very good care of this one. These things are not cheap. It's a simple hermetically sealed AC unit with very few moving parts. It had to be the evaporator fan that was making all that noise.
Sure enough, after removing the back panels, it was obvious where all that noise was coming from. This is an easy repair and anyone out there with a similar problem can save themselves about $250 by going DIY on this one. Here's what I did.
1. Go to partstown.com order a new fan. Here's the link: http://www.partstown.com/manitowoc_ice/man2413089
2. Remove the back panels, then loosen the bracket that holds the water connection ( as shown ) so you can get the fan out .
3. Remove the fan. There are 3 small screws holding the fan motor to its mounting bracket. It's pretty hard to get those out without using a flexible screw driver.
4. After getting the fan loose open the front panel and find the two connectors for the fan power. Make a note of the color coding, so you remember to correctly hook the wires back up.
5. Install the new fan and tighten everything back up.
