Man vs Machine

I vaguely remember in some literature class of my youth that there were only four story themes. I'm pretty sure three of them were:

1. Man vs Man
2. Man vs Nature
3. Man vs Himself

But what was the fourth? Today I will nominate "Man vs Machine".

The particular machine today was my dishwasher.

The battle actually started a few days ago at roughly midnight. I had started the dishwasher before going to bed, as I often do. We have a pretty quiet dishwasher so the sound has never been a problem before. But on this fitful night it started to make a horrible racket which continued for almost all of its water spraying time -- over an hour.

According to the owners manual (yes, I still have it) this usually indicates that something hard has entered the food grider. It should go away after it gets all ground up. But of course, the sound never went away or lessened. Owner's manual's recommendation: call for service. But since I'm unemployed, I decided to battle the dishwasher myself.

6/10ths (my better half) gurgled our dishwasher model number and found a service manual for the equivalent Whirlpool model (ours is a Kenmore). I printed the PDF and went to work.

Aside #100 decibels: The troubleshooting guide in the service guide said nothing about noise as a possible problem.

I removed the racks and started taking out parts until I got down to, and removed, the food grinder. There was nothing around to explain the noise, leaving me to conclude that the main motor (which turns the grinder as well as pumping water through the sprayers) was going bad.

I went back to the owner's manual (the service guide didn't include a parts list) and then to Sears' parts store (online, of course). A new motor was $140 (+tax and shipping). A new sump and motor assembly was $180. Since there were lots of dire warnings in the service manual about damaging delicate parts when removing or installing the motor, I decided that for an extra $40 I'd go ahead and get the sump and motor assembly. But it was sold-out @ Sears (both online and at all stores within 100 miles). The motor was available online, but not at the local Sears store).

Gurgle confirmed that bad motors were not uncommon for Whirlpool/Kenmore dishwashers and that most technicians prefer to replace the motor and sump as an assembly rather than just the motor. You have to remove the motor and sump assembly before you can get the motor off to replace it, so treating the thing as an FRU (Field Replaceable Unit) was not unreasonable.

The odd thing was that Sears' price was among the lowest believable prices (the $68 one on EBay sounded "too good to be true"(tm)). So I called my local appliance store and was told that they could have one for me the next morning. $200. Whatever, I bought it. Chalk it up to the cost of needing it now. Besides, that $20 premium was certainly lower than the trip charge any repairman would tack on.

Of course, there are dishes to do in the meantime. So I tried to reassemble the dishwasher. I couldn't get the grinder back in place. It seems that they expect you to take the sump assembly out first before you go disassembling it. I didn't do that. I just started taking it apart while the main housing was still in the dishwasher tub. The proper way to access the food grinder also requires removing the motor (dire warnings and all). Of course, having not removed the sump, I also hadn't removed the motor. So I put it all back together without the food grinder and made sure to rinse my dishes very well before putting them in the washer.

Guess what? Yep. It was much quieter without the food grinder installed. But it still made the horrible grating noise about half the time. I guess the food grinder put enough stress on the motor to make it complain all the time.

In the end, I got my new sump and motor assembly, got the old one out, got the new one in, and am now doing my first load.

Nice and quiet.

Keeping my fingers crossed that my surgical procedures didn't cause any incontinence.