GE dishwasher: Getting to the pump assembly

[janesire]

We have a 6 year old GE dishwasher (nothing fancy, just the basic model) that has problems with rusty bits of rack getting into the drain. I can clearly see bits of rust everywhere in the drain etc. We also have problems with dishes not clean, spots etc. We want to disassemble the pump and the drain, clean it out and re-assemble. The way it's built, I can't remove the water spray arms from inside the dishwasher and get to the pump from the inside (may be all dishwashers are like this, I just didn't know that). I guess the only way is to remove the kick plate and access the pump this way. Has anyone here worked on a GE dishwasher and give me any tips on what to expect? The manual doesn't have any assembly diagram. Any suggestions are appreciated.

Thanks.

P.S: I have since got hold of new dishwasher racks so I won't be using the rusty ones after this.

[janesire]

OP again. The model number is GSD2220F00BB. Does anyone know if it's possible at all to remove the spray arm?

[janesire]

Bumping the thread. still looking for any suggestions.

[Tony Hwang]

Hi, You can't separate pump from motor. it is integrated single unit. You can remove it from underneath behind kick panel. Remove all hoses, valve assembly link, ground wire, unplug motor leads.

[janesire]

Update to my own post.

We cleaned the drain pipe, spray arm and the insides of the pump. So it now drains freely. We started the dishwasher to see how it will run. We noticed that there's very little water coming in. We loaded the lower rack with just two dishes facing up and there was hardly any water in the dishes after 5 minutes of running. That's where we stopped.

Tomorrow of course we'll check the water inlet pipe. The sink is right next to the dishwasher and we don't have any issues with water pressure or temperature in the sink faucet. Other than the inlet water pipe what else should we check?

Any suggestions are appreciated.

[janesire]

Wonder why nobody seems to reply to my thread :)

Last night I checked the water pipe and it has good pressure so that's not the problem. I also checked the float and it's bouncing without any problem.

Today I'll check the inlet valve. Is there a difference between water inlet valve and solenoid? I thought solenoid is nothing but an electrically operated valve. So are these different or the same thing?

I'll take the inlet valve out, test continuity and clean it out. Also, I'll take out the other tube that connects valve to the dishwasher and clean that too. I hope this fixes it.

[KD]

This may or may not help you, I don't know a lot about dishwasher innards. Maybe the arms have nothing to do with how much water comes in. But did you check the spray arms to make sure they aren't clogged? On my old dishwasher it wasn't cleaning well and the soap wasn't dissolving, so on advice from here I removed the arm (mine unscrewed from the bottom of the dishwasher), and sure enough, there was a couple bits of twist ties stuck in there catching other stuff and clogging up the holes! We don't use twist ties, must have been the previous owners. Anyhow, with some tweezers and other implements I managed to remove the blockages and it worked better.

Good luck!

KD