I guess we’d been in the house about two years when the dishwasher, whose brand rhymes with “bitchin’ fade,” first started acting up. The touch panel would periodically lose its mind. This button lit up that LED, and that one this one; START worked one day and not the next; it would insist on SANI RINSE, whatever the hell that is; and so forth. It never malfunctioned for long, though. If you wanted to run the dishwasher, you could play with it for a minute—push this, hold that, keep your mouth right—and get it started.
One weekend it got a lot worse, and we couldn’t make it work. I killed its circuit breaker overnight, and still nothing. So I went to repairclinic.com (which has my highest recommendation; awesome site) and poked around. The only electronics in the whole thing are in that touch panel, and there’s only one board to buy. Two minutes later, it’s on its way.
That evening, the dishwasher started working again. And I don’t mean it got back to its intermittent, worry-another-operation-out-of-it state; I mean it was working absolutely correctly. I’d scared it straight! Ha!
The board showed up. I probably could have returned it unopened, but I decided to keep it in inventory. I figured I’d sell it on eBay if the dishwasher left my life before I had a chance to use it. I left the board on my workbench for a week or so in case the problem recurred, and it didn’t. So I put it away.
The dishwasher worked perfectly for the next two years. Then, the gremlin returned and gradually worsened, to the point that I got the board down and planned to replace it the following morning. Again, it straightened up.
Moving this circuit board is like pointing the switch-bush out to a misbehaving child, apparently.
And now it’s doing it again. We’ve been putting up with a consistent CHILD LOCK activation during its wash cycle for about a year now (defeated easily enough). But now the erratica is back. I romanced it for five minutes this morning trying to get it started, gave up, and went to finish getting ready for work. When I returned to leave, Lea had it running.
So I’m thinking about getting the circuit board down again. But first, let’s see if the dishwasher knows I’m blogging about it. Maybe that’s enough.
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Pointing out the switch bush – ha ha ha. My grandmother would tell us to go cut her a switch. As if, she really expected us to come back home while she was still there.
Heh. I wish that kind of intimidation worked on things like cars and refrigerators.
I bet it’s your authoritative presence that scares it into submission.
For the record, the dishwasher is again working perfectly. Just blogged. Nothing else done.