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I have owned this washer since I bought it new in 1999. Up until last week I had exactly zero issues with it. That's 18 years of trouble-free operation. This washer has survived three moves, including two long distance out of state moves. Last week during the wash cycle a red light indicating a drain problem came on and the water did not drain from the load of laundry I was doing. I could not hear the drain pump motor running. I drained the machine manually and tried to find info online about this problem. Unfortunately, I could not find anything at all about this. So I downloaded a service manual that Miele provides and set about troubleshooting the problem myself. I am an electrical engineer by education and software engineer by profession, so I am not intimidated by electronics. I started by measuring the resistance of the drain pump motor. If it measured as open circuit or short circuit it would indicate a bad motor. Alas, the motor measured something around 4 ohms, which seemed normal to me. So started checking for power going to the motor. I connected my voltmeter to the motor supply wire and put the washer into a drain cycle. This washer can be put into any of the available cycle components by user controls. I can select spin, drain or rinse from the front panel. So I selected drain and my voltmeter read nothing from the drain pump motor feed. Miele makes access to the internals of the machine very simple. Three 10mm bolts around the tub opening and two screws in the soap dispenser area and the whole front including the washer door swings open on a hinge to the right. This machine has two circuit boards mounted to the front sheet metal. A logic board up top and a power control board down on the bottom. They are connected by a ribbon cable. I traced the drain pump motor wire to the lower power board and put my voltmeter there. No power coming from the power board to the drain pump. At this point I could say that the problem is either in the power board or the logic board that issues commands to the power board. My money was on the power board since that is what does all the heavy lifting of operating the pump. It has a bunch of relays on it that switch the power on and off to the various motors in the machine. I went ahead and removed the power board from the machine. Miele made that very easy. A few plastic clips that could be released with a screw driver and board was off. I unplugged all the connectors and took a good look at the board all over. Immediately, I saw a printed trace on the board that looked suspicious. Traces on the board are wires that carry electricity to various places. The trace in question went from a relay to a via, which is a special hole in the board that carries the trace over to the other side. On the other side the trace also looked suspicious and continued from the via to the connector that supplies the drain pump motor with power. I had my problem right there in plain sight. The trace is a thin layer of copper bonded to the circuit board and covered with a silk screen (green in this case). The green of the silkscreen was completely gone from that particular trace (on both sides) and the copper looked like it was no longer bonded to the board, but rather floating above it. I checked for continuity from one end of the trace to the other and got an open circuit. This was the problem. Over the years the current running along the trace has heated it up repeatedly (possibly due to a design flaw that under sized this trace or maybe because the drain pump struggled against some clogs in the past) and finally repeated heating and cooling of the trace caused it to fail. The fix was very simple. I simple removed the damaged trace from the board since it was just hanging there not really attached to anything. Then I ran a fairly thick 14 gauge wire to replace the trace. This required a little soldering. I reassembled everything and now my washer is running like new again. I hope this helps some one in the future. If more details are needed, please contact me. I'll be happy to help.

File Name: Miele washer W19xx wire diagrams File Submitter: LI-NY Tech File Submitted: 18 Aug 2015 File Category: Appliance Repair Manual Pot Luck Supper Miele washer W19xx series wire diagrams W1903 W1918 W1930 W1926 W1986 W1966 Click here to download this file

Recently RD Appliance Service was briefly confounded by a Miele washer, a W1918, not exactly the latest model. The complaint was that the washer would not spin out the clothing at the end of the cycle, it would leave them sopping wet. Sometimes, if the customer re-ran the cycle the washer would spin. So, armed with all of the necessary technical documentation and diagnostic equipment I ventured out to the home. Upon arrival I opened up the service manual on my tablet, placed the machine into service mode and proceeded to run a spin test. The tub spun up to high speed without a hiccup. Hmmm, I thought. So I exited service mode and just ran a regular spin cycle, and again the washer spun. After questioning the customer about her use of the machine I concluded that the machine was sometimes being overloaded and that this was causing it to be unable to balance itself, thus preventing it from spinning. Not so. She called back the next day with the same problem, and again when I arrived the problem would not occur. So I needed to do some more in depth research on this issue as this is no “Just replace it” type of washer, they retail for $2000 or more. With some helpful tips from my fellow appliance technicians at appliantology.org I returned armed with more knowledge and we got it figured it. My father and I both went back on this, two heads and all. I called the customer about an hour before we were going to arrive and had her start a wash cycle. This worked out well because we arrived just at the end of the cycle and found the washer not spinning. Finally! No spin at the end of a regular cycle, no error codes flashing. Set it to a spin only cycle, no spin. Put it in test mode and ran a spin test, no spin. Alright, now we’re getting somewhere. So, we opened up the front of the machine (thank you Miele for making the whole front panel open on a hinge!) in order to find out if the motor was getting voltage, which would indicate a problem with the motor itself. However, this old Miele technical info does not include voltages for the motor, and the wires are all the same color and not labeled, same goes for the connectors. We knew it uses a single winding DC motor, but that’s about as in depth as Miele gets regarding the motor. So after exercising our finely honed diagnostic skills we determined which two wires were the motor voltage supply wires and we attached the voltmeter leads to them near the lower electronic (secondary control board). We once again put the machine into spin and the damn thing started spinning again. This, however, showed us the voltage used by the motor when it is working, and this is crucial information. In case you are interested it uses ~16-20 VDC on tumble, changing polarity as it switches directions, then the voltage ramps up to a whopping 195 VDC on max spin. Ok, so we know the motor works, but we still don’t know what’s wrong with the washer. We began doing basic diagnostic checks once again, check and clear drain pump trap, check pressure switch hose, etc. Nothing. So we ran another test cycle. This time allowing it to fill and tumble and then move to drain and spin. Aha! Now it won’t spin. It tumbles a little at 16-20 VDC, then stops and won’t spin, no voltage to the motor. Ok, good. I suggest checking the pressure switch again. So my father tapped the pressure switch and voila!, this motherfu%&er starts spinning, and reads all the way up to 195 VDC again. Yes! The pressure switch was sticking….sometimes. So, we’ve replaced the pressure switch and the air trap with the pressure switch hose and that old school, quality German washing machine is running like new once again. Thanks for reading. David RD Appliance Service, Corp. http://www.rdapplianceservice.com RD Appliance Blog