A friend of mine has a top freezer GE refrigerator model GTS18FBMFRWW that I'm guessing is 10 or 15 years old.  Ever since he moved into his apartment, this fridge has had a compromised door shelf retainer bar (see picture).  He's over it and wants to replace the bar.  Prices for this hunk of plastic are ridiculous, ranging from $70 to almost $100.  Ebay doesn't have anything with the matching part number, which is WR17X10668.  Sears Parts Direct has the part and "only" wants $36 for it, plus shipping. 

Can we do any better than that?  Are there interchangeable bars/part numbers that can be substituted for the original?  This is about fit and function, not form.  There a similar looking bars on ebay but with different part numbers, but I can't find any cross references anywhere.

Thanks for any advice. 

I think this retainer bar is aluminum, If you want to fix without enriching GE just remove it and straighten & reinforce it from the back with a thin piece of steel or even wood [ use one of the free oversized paint stirring sticks that they give out for 5 gallon cans ]

You can glue, screw or even tape it to the back of the original bar, Get Creative

John L. 

Thanks John, that's something to consider.

It's been a while since I took a good look at the damaged area, as repairing it would have been my first thought, but maybe I saw something that made me think repair wasn't an option.  I'll check it out again and see if there's a way to fix it.   It's hardly worth spending the money on a throw-away fridge that doesn't even belong to him, but he's way over it with the compromised bar at this point.

I was counting on removal & replacement instructions to be provided with a new bar, so if you can advise on how the bar is extracted, that would be helpful.  I'll check for instructional videos on line as well.  It's only the bar that needs fixing.  The brackets on each end are fine.

Thanks Eddie.

I don't know if he cares about looks, but I'll suggest your ideas as well as John's.

I think he's shoving stuff into that shelf right now because the bent bar allows for it -- and also allows things to slip out if stuff isn't crammed in there.   The other shelf in that door as well as those in the freezer door aren't so crammed full as to  damage those bars.

He had already ordered the replacement part before I shared the suggestions made above, but when I took another look at the bent retainer bar, it appeared to be beyond repair so it's all good.  Even if it could be repaired, it would never look right, and that's a thing with him.  Yesterday I installed the new bar, which was a cinch.

The other complaint about this fridge is that things at the rear tend to freeze, particularly on the top shelf.  I noticed that the air inlet for the fresh food section shoots the cold air toward the back.  There's a half grille on the front of this inlet, but I felt no airflow from it.  The rear opening where the cold air blows out has no grille.

Is this normal?  He had the cold control set at 3.5 (out of 9, I think) and bumped it down to 3 last night.   There is no separate "air" control for the freezer.   I had a couple of beers out of this fridge last night and they weren't overly cold, but they were also at the very bottom toward the front.  I told him that he should lower the top shelf and reorganize things to keep the cold drinks up there, and keep things like fruit and vegetables down at the bottom.  For whatever reason, there's only one crisper.  A right-sized plastic tub could serve as a second storage bin for fruits and vegetables, and that's what I'll suggest, or if one of my drawers from the '52 Kelvinator will fit, he can use that.

Any other suggestions on how to resolve this?

Thanks for the validation John.  That is the exact advice I gave him. 

It might take some convincing for him to see it my way, but he's not storing things properly right now and wouldn't have the freezing issues he's experiencing if he reconfigured things so items that freeze easily won't be up top anymore. 

If he lets me have at it, he'll thank me when I'm done.