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Messing With The Miele Dishwasher
Cleaning a washerless Mixer Tap to
reduce leaking
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Contributed by Puddledud.
The Article
Messing with the Miele dishwasher
The Miele dishwasher played up and it was either fix it or get another
one. Good dishwashers are expensive so I decided to try to fix it.
It should be clearly understood that I know next to nothing about
dishwashers but the process I followed may perhaps be of assistance to
others so here it is. To be fair though I should also say that I have
messed about with a lot of other consumer goods of one kind or another
from the wall oven to the TV.
Before I started to play about with the innards of the dishwasher I
turned it off at the wall! It would be even better to unplug the
powerlead. Keep in mind too the potential to damage the hoses when
moving the unit about.
Somewhere I picked up that dishwasher access is frequently via the base
cover plate and that there is a float cut off there that sometimes
causes problems - so I tried the base cover plate - after removing the
drawers and laying the dishwasher on its side. Humm - looks complicated
in there. I did manage to identify the float mechanism and my knowledge
of the beast increased that much. At that point I put it back together.
Haste in such endeavours is not a good thing!
Perhaps I should say that the diagnosis at this point was that the
dishwasher was leaking water into the overflow tray - the sump - and
that the float was then turning off the cycle and diverting the
dishwasher sequence to continuously running the pump. (I put that
together by looking about on the net and asking around - by researching
the matter.)
One thing that I'd tried earlier on was to tip the dishwasher sideways a
bit to get it to spill out some of the overflowed water in an effort to
get it to finish an interrupted cycle - but that isn't the way to go
for there has got to be the potential to get electrocuted as a result -
aside from the mess created.
The next big step forward was to talk to a repairman. He didn't want to
travel to the country to do the job, quoted $150 for a service call if
he was to make the trip and estimated a total cost of between $250 and
$325. But he was helpful and when I showed that I half understood the
problem he suggested putting the machine up on blocks and watching to
see where the water was coming from. He said to get back to him once I
knew where it was coming from. He really has been most helpful and
interested in my endeavours - the suggestion to put the machine up onto
blocks so that I could see what was happening was a major breakthrough.
Getting the machine up onto rather precarious blocks - with the base
cover removed - was the next step. I put a saucepan underneath the
machine and lay down to watch the show. And quite a show it was - one
saucepan was not sufficient - a second was needed to contain the 4.2
litres of water that dripped out from between the motor and the
circulation pump housing during the course of one Intensive washing
cycle.
So I rang the technician back. He muttered something about the partition
and suggested that maybe he'd better make the trip and attend to it.
Being, perforce, cost sensitive, I said I was worried about the cost
left it at that.
So - what next? I'm trying - with this account - to detail a process, a
gradual gathering of information and a narrowing of focus in addressing
the problem.
I looked on eBay and found a motor and pump from the exact same base
model machine for sale as a secondhand unit. But how was I to make sure
that the units were really the same?
The machine at this time was perched precariously on blocks in the
middle of the kitchen and I didn't want to tip it up again so I got out a
mirror on an arm, fetched my bedside lamp and tried to read the model
number off the motor compliance plate. Of course in the mirror things
were reversed and difficult to read - so I got out my camera, carefully
wiped the much dripped on floor and took some pictures of the compliance
plate. Getting the pictures lined up correctly to show the detail I
wanted was more difficult than I would have thought due to paralux
errors in aligning the camera but once the images were moved to the
computer I was able to print out a nice clear picture of the, in situ,
compliance plate and "snap" it really did match the one in the eBay
advertisment.
Now the new price of a replacement motor and pump could have been in the
order of $350 or more and this advertisment was looking for about half
that but I thought perhaps a third of the new price was reasonable -
offers were invited in the sale notice so an offer of about a third was
made - after 10 pm that evening. And it was accepted very promptly. The
acceptance email was waiting early the next morning.
The thinking here was that replacing the whole unit meant no possibly
tricky meddling with seals and it offered the possibility of making a
one off swap over of the motor and pump module. It would have been
cheaper to get a seal kit but to do that I'd have had to be sure exactly
which kit was needed and that I'd be able to get the pump back together
correctly. Of course if I didn't assemble the pump correctly after
doing the seals then I might have to do the job all over again -
possibly several times.
Another thought was that, if things went bad, then at least I'd have a
pump unit to work on without having to have the dishwasher sitting about
in pieces - my wife is not happy to have the dishwasher standing in the
middle of the kitchen floor for she is an orderly minded person.
The deal for the motor and pump went through very smartly and was
completed early the next morning so I hopped into the car that same
morning and fetched the motor and pump assembly- two and a half hours of
driving later I was back home, by ten past twelve - scarcely even
afternoon!
The chap I got the motor and pump from made a comment about taking the top off to get into the machine.
When I later investigated this idea I found that it was indeed the case -
look underneath the top overhang at the front of the machine for the
fixing screws- remove the top and the side panels and before long the
machine is relatively easy to access.
I spent part of the afternoon changing the unit over and had it done before four o'clock.
The change over was a little tricky as there is not a lot of room
available to manouvre the motor and pump assembly inside the framework
at the back of the dishwasher - but I managed it - putting a smear of
vaseline on the hoses when reattaching them and trying to make sure that
the hoses were well clamped when they were reattached. (I've no idea
whether or not it was appropriate to use vaseline in this way!)
(A good technique, which I didn't use, is to photograph the assembly
before removing anything - another is to mark connectors with a coloured
texta if there is potential for confusing which cable goes where - I
did do that.)
I reused a main seal where the pump joins onto the machine and that
probably wasn't a good idea - both the ones I had to hand didn't inspire
confidence. It is also interesting to note that some of the hoses were
quite soft - there is potential for them to split when they do give up
the ghost.
Unfortunately - it looked for a while that things had not turned out
well. The detergent block wasn't being consumed when the machine was run
and the pump noise didn't sound quite right in the intensive wash parts
of the cycle. Maybe the pump seals were dried out or maybe it had a bit
of a build up of calcium. Maybe the packing of the dishes wasn't done
well and the dishes were blocking the rotating arm.
(I think that the detergent block is washed away principally due to the
action of the top rotating arm in this dishwasher so if the arm is
blocked from rotating then the detergent block is little reduced at the
end of the washing cycle.)
I rang the technician again. He couldn't help any more at that
point and referred me to a person who would be able to redo the seals on
the pump - now that it was out of the machine. He was very surprised
that it had all come together in just two days.
But the project wasn't over yet! I ran a bottle of dishwasher cleaner
through on the Intensive cycle - and the machine finished the
cycle correctly. That was very good news for the float had not acted to
interrupt the machine cycle and that missing event clearly indicated
that the machine was no longer leaking litres of water. Even better I
could hear the pump doing its thing on the intensive washing parts of
the machine cycle.
I put some dishes in and ran the machine on the Economy cycle - and it
ran full cycle - and the dishes were clean, and the detergent block was
consumed. Maybe I have actually got it working again. Time will no doubt
tell!
There is some specific information to be garnered in this account for
someone wanting to work on their dishwasher and perhaps some
encouragement but what is really on offer is the concept of starting out
and then bit by bit accumulating details and refining the focus of the
enquiry until the necessary level of information gathering has been
accomplished to allow a particular task to be undertaken.
(By the way I'm not a dishwasher technician and I don't know anything
about dishwashers. If a reader should be encouraged to act on the basis
of this account such an activity is to be entirely at their own risk!)
A last thought - searching for the particular dishwasher by
manufacturer's name and model number and then looking through the
catalogue of available parts for a particular machine is a fairly good
way of both identifying the part which may be needed and also of
starting to learn the correct names for the dishwasher parts - let alone
a means of securing the part needed.
Puddledud
(This account is in the public domain - with this restriction - no-one
is to be required to pay a fee or to register for a site membership in
order to access the content.) 25 July 2015
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First posted in August,
2015 (150805)
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