Maytag Dishwashers FYI (circa 2000+- to current or thereabouts).

Ryan Mooney

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Best laid plans.... Today I installed the new dishwasher so that pretty much shot the day. :mad:

Even better I used a slightly too-long-a screw for the anti-tip brace and popped the little piece of trim I epoxied to the countertop between the dishwasher and the granite countertop the last round off so that's back in clamps and we can't even use the dishwasher until the epoxy sets up :doh:

On a related note if anyone has a Maytag dishwasher of the 2009+- a year or so and onwards vintage (the brand new ones use the same not-so-quality cable apparently), disassemble the front panel assembly now and water proof the unshielded part of the ribbon cable to save yourself having to replace the whole thing. The failure point seems to be most commonly be where the ribbon cable enters the control panel. The traces are unshielded there and the salts/moisture in the air inside the dishwasher just eats them away. The symptoms are the front panel not responding or acting intermittent.

I took ours apart and did a full diagnostic, one trace had entirely flaked off for ~1mm and two or three others were looking pretty shabby and probably didn't have solid continuity. Because its a flexible ribbon cable I didn't know of a good way to re-draw the traces[1] and my soldering skills aren't anywhere near up to something that fine (the trace is maybe a thou or less thick). The replacement part was ~$180 shipped (for our model, some look a bit cheaper) so it was starting to look like throwing good money after bad to keep it rolling on an 8 year old dishwasher as much as I hate disposing versus fixing (the whole panel+cable is a single molded plastic FRU so you can't just replace the cable sadly).

The new washer is a Bosch, not cheap but pretty nice looking. Here's hoping it lasts!


[1] Ok I did try redrawing them with graphite mixed with nail polish but either I didn't get them drawn completely or (based on the evidence) I had to much bleed over, because the one light that worked before didn't after - it was sort of a last shot I didn't have a lot of hope for because the traces are so small it was real hard to get a clean drawing.
 
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