Sorry for my late reply, i've been involved with school and such.
Vacboy88, my best friend's name is Evan. He was the one was searching for diswhasher tips.
Anyway. As a kid we had this old GE dishwasher, GSD500, that's all i remember of it. It was old, early 80's with the GE module running East-West instead of North-South like it does now. I guess it was advanced for the era, since alot of relatives we had, their dishashers usually had just one spray arm while this GE had 2 with the tower. The arm was stainless, so as a technically advanced kid, i would bend and reaim the holes in the spray arm to make new patterns. Some improving the wash action, LOL, some making it worse.
Then we moved to another house, with a builder's special GE [GSD 1180] machine. This was a Potscrubber model with that multi-orbital wash arm that GE experimented with for a few years. It also had that passive filter in the rear of the machine. For the first couple years this Potscrubber worked very well. Then things started to break on it. The retainer that held the touchpad buttons broke, so we lost "engergysaver dry". The plunger valve under the passive filter broke alot. I replaced that about 3 times inthe 8 years we had the machine.
It always broke cuz the rubber on it deteriorated. Then the rubber sump boot started to deteriorate and thin. Eventually it would've ruptured, so i declared it dead.
The day after christmas we bought a new dishwasher. GE of course, we went with the middle Triton XL line. GSD 6600.
This machine is impressive. GE finally came up with a wash system that competes. Not only does it have three towerless wash arms. But a foolproof filtration system that can handle a ton of food. 3/4 of the sump floor is coverd in stainless filter screen. Under the wash arm is a micromesh filter that filters a fraction of the water at a time, aprox. 1 gal. a minute. The micro filter is cleaned by the drain pump sucking out soil at the same time as draining the tub. These machines have GE's new Hard Food grinder. However it is moot because the pump is covered in filters, so large soil never reaches it. Another nice feature it has is GE's laser turbidity sensor. We've had this machine going on 4 years, and it's been awesome. When the parents don't load it wrong, it washes flawlessly every time. The soil sensor is nice cuz my mom runs EVERYTHING on Pots and Pans even though she rinses everything. So the sensor is able to compensate by washing with just 7gal. of water instead of the standard 11gal. for Pots and Pans.
GE's are by far my favorite machines, especially their Triton XL wash system. They're layed out well and have an extremely simple wash mechanism. I just have a few beefs with them. Their hard food grinders on the cheaper models have too big of screens, so some soil passes the grinder and gets lodged in the wash arms. They're a bit louder than some machines. And their budget mechanism with the loud popping solenoid has to go in the 21st century. It's noise will rub off as cheap to consumers now.
However, I think Whirlpool's wash modules are amazing with the way they can grind up and filter/store an amazing amount of food soil.
I'm just 22, and am more experienced with modern dishwashers, and won't be collecting appliances. So i'll be more active in the 'modern machine' forum. I just wanted to answer some of your questions.
Thanks folks, you're all awesome. Thank you for the warm words and welcomes.
John