valvashon
Active member
Halfway through a cycle two days ago I noticed that "Phil" sounded odd, with the motor running but no water being splashed around (first half of the soak and wash cycle was fine). Doing some investigating, it appears that the inlet valve is activating at the same time as the drain valve and also starts to fill water when the blower motor activates at the end of a cycle. Mostly what I hear is the water coming in and going right back out (can hear it in the sink drain) so no washing action takes place as the machine never fills.
Is this how the timers fail- by having the drain valve, inlet valve and sometimes the blower motor all get shorted together somehow? I've never had the timer apart- is there a way to fix this or clean it by hosing it down with contact cleaner? I will assume that a replacement timer is NLA and they can't be rebuilt.
My kid just offered to build a microcontroller programmed with modern-length wash and rinse cycles that could then control a board of relays that would run the valves, motor, detergent cups, etc. A KDI series machine with a 90 minute wash cycle and two 20 minute rinse cycles (or something like that) would certainly get dishes clean with today's dish detergents. There's really nothing in a new dishwasher that is different than an old KitchenAid other than the controller that is determining how long the cycles are.
Back to today- what can I do, if anything, to keep this thing alive until the microcontroller shows up?
Thanks-
Val
Is this how the timers fail- by having the drain valve, inlet valve and sometimes the blower motor all get shorted together somehow? I've never had the timer apart- is there a way to fix this or clean it by hosing it down with contact cleaner? I will assume that a replacement timer is NLA and they can't be rebuilt.
My kid just offered to build a microcontroller programmed with modern-length wash and rinse cycles that could then control a board of relays that would run the valves, motor, detergent cups, etc. A KDI series machine with a 90 minute wash cycle and two 20 minute rinse cycles (or something like that) would certainly get dishes clean with today's dish detergents. There's really nothing in a new dishwasher that is different than an old KitchenAid other than the controller that is determining how long the cycles are.
Back to today- what can I do, if anything, to keep this thing alive until the microcontroller shows up?
Thanks-
Val
