Any appliance repair gurus on here?

[NM_Shooter]

I need some help.

we broke a glass in our Kitcheaid dishwasher tonight while unloading.  In order to clean it out best, I pulled the bottom spray cover off to vacuum out the glass.  I found something that raised my eyebrows.... take a look.

There is a connecting port that sends water up to the top sprayer.  Note that the male and female connections are not lined up.  At first, I thought that the bottom nozzle would maybe index over to mate with the grey plastic connector.  No way.  That grey plastic is not firmly attached to the back wall, and can not stay in place if the bottom piece rotates. 

Picture 1:



So I thought... okay... let's unscrew the top plate, rotate it 45 degrees, and line everything up.  Nope.  Can't do it.  Note that at ~4 o-clock on the top plate there is a square block.  This thing has to line up with the bottom of recovery plate and has to be in that position.  So that means that the lower unit must be out of position, right?  Here is the next layer:



Crap... notice that the bottom plate only has 4 mounting screws,  so indexing the thing over 45 degrees is not possible.  What the heck am I missing here?  Plus, the oval opening apparently must line up with the lower oval opening.  I must have to rotate the bottom black piece now to get this all to line up.  I am getting deeper into the belly of this demon.  Any thoughts?

[MountainDon]

1-800-kitchenaid



Sorry I couldn't help myself.  

Let me go think a bit...





I made up the number.

[MountainDon]

I'm not sure i you mean that white plate with the male fitting actually rotates or just sits there?

I assume the machine was working fine before this and that you didn't use the 3 lb hammer when disassembling it. Of course it's kind hard to see inside one of those while it's running. Is the new camera waterproof.

[glenn kangiser]

I told my wife she could not have a dishwasher....

[NM_Shooter]

In the top pic, you can't see the 8 screws I've removed in the very top plate that has the "nozzle".  That top plate can not rotate without the entire giant white round circular strainer rotating. But the entire white strainer seems to be firmly fixed to the black sub plate in the bottom pic.  But in looking at how flimsy the grey upright water pipe (pic 1) is, I don't think it was designed to rotate at all.  No way will those mesh by themselves. 

The dishwasher has never worked in what I would consider to be a good fashion.  This may be why.   It's possible that it was improperly assembled from the start.  My builder was famous for cutting corners, and he probably got a great "deal" on this unit. 

I wonder if there are any online service repair manuals.....

[Redoverfarm]

Maybe these will help


http://repair2000.com/dish.html

http://applianceguru.com/

www.acmehowto.com/.../appliance/dishwasher/dishwasher.php

www.fixitnow.com/

[peternap]

1. Take the Grey piece off and put it in the spare parts box

2. Use duct tape to help align everything else

3. Never listen to my appliance repair advice.

[rick91351]

Sometimes in our man must fix mode we over look the simple.  Is the dog gone thing still under warranty?   

rlr 

[NM_Shooter]

Whoops... try that again.  No warranty... it is 12 years old.  We didn't use it much because it never seemed to clean well (go figure). 

I don't like paying service calls to have appliances repaired.  I suspect I will pull the thing, and if not easily fixed I will toss it in the back of my truck and take it to a service center. 

We went camping for Thanksgiving so we are having our turkey today, and doing Christmas decorating.  No chance of getting much time to work on it today! 

[NM_Shooter]

Blinded by the obvious.

Because the nozzle was off index by darn near exactly 45 degrees, and the mounting bolts on the top are spaced on 45 degree increments, I thought it was an assembly problem. 

After looking at replacement parts from the below links (thanks Red) it occurred to me that the whole assembly slipped.  I flipped the washer on its back and took a hard look at how the motor and pump assy was mounted.  Held in place by 4 hard rubber spacers, these have aged and lost their ability to hold the whole thing in place.  The startup motor torque from the pump made the whole assy bump over. 
I was able to grab the pump assy using a 180# Bohemian counterweight wrench and twist it back into alignment. 

Now to go find some new rubber bumpers.  Online they are $0.95 each.  I'm going to take a chance and not replace the main seal for the pump.  I wonder how that will work out 

[glenn kangiser]

Interesting - this is sounding better.