Kitchenaid dishwasher model KDTE104EBL2

[Dubov]

Help please! My Kitchenaid dishwasher has a mind of its’ own. About 1.5 years ago, I had an appliance repairman come out and take a look because the dry cycle wasn’t working. It had worked fine for about 2 years prior to this.  He told me that the problem was that my hot water wasn’t hot enough and I needed to run water in the sink until it was hot, then start the dishwasher. Hello? Why did I get a dishwasher with a delay feature?  He checked out voltage and said they were all fine, so that’s the only thing it could be. I dug deep on the internet and found someone’s post that explained how to run a diagnostic. The diagnostic on this model doesn’t give codes that I’m aware of. After running the diagnostic, everything worked fine for about 6 months. Since then, the appliance works intermittently. Sometimes perfectly, other times it seems to “steam” clean. I don’t hear water running and the detergent is only partially dissolved. It seems to go through rinse aid more rapidly than I think is normal. Of note the gasket on the detergent dispenser has come off. Could something like that be causing this problem? Also when I now run the diagnostic mode, it sometimes resets. Other times I have to go to the house breaker panel and reset the breaker to get it to work and even then it’s now less likely to clean than not to clean. For the last 3 months we’ve been hand washing rather than even using it. Planning a whole kitchen overhaul in the next year or so, so I really don’t want to buy a new dishwasher. Ideas?

[vallen513]

If my dishwasher was giving me this kind of trouble, I would be handwashing too. I don't even work on dishwashers anymore, because most of the problems seem to be intermittent. Which takes too much time to repair. As far as where to start, I notice about it tripping a breaker and "steam" cleaning. So it could be something electrically going on with the heating element circuit. Would need an amp meter and see how much current is flowing.

[Dubov]

Thanks! Just to be clear, the circuit breaker isn’t tripping, but turning the circuit off seems to reset the dishwasher. 

[Vance R]

Pull the toeplate and the tech sheet should there on the back of the plate. After entering diagnostics the first step flashes all the leds then the next 3 steps will flash the error codes. This model is prone to having the wash motor quit after running awhile in the wash cycles, does it get really quite while washing?