Dischwasher Tripping RCD

[Jonathan Dabb]

An intermittant fault has developed on our Bosch dischwasher (aprox 8 yrears old)

The other day when I turned it on it tripped the RCD then continued to work without any problem.

Today it tripped every time I tried to switch it on. Thinking it may be a chafed wire I removed the front pannel and had a poke arround. There were no sign of any water ingress or damaged wiring. I had a good feel of the ribon type cable which connects the door to the rest of the machine and there was nothing obvious, but it was dificut to cary out a thourough inspection. Without fitting the front door pannel I tried switching the machine on and it worked ok. Opened the door fiddled arround with the wiring and it still worked ok.

Can any one point suggest how I trace this intermittant fault. Because it either blows the RCD on power up or works ok I suspect the ribbon cable but I would like some advice as to how I can isolate it before I start stripping it down and replacing it.

Any advice welcome.

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[Paul]

we had a similar problem with our bosch dishwasher and it turned out to be the electric mains filter, ours had actually burnt out. a bosch one cost £35 we got a standard mains filter for £8 and its been fine since.

Paul.

[Jonathan Dabb]

Where about's is the filter and what does it look like? Does it look like a capacitor situated somewhere close to the incoming supply ? I seem to remember seeing something like this on the washing machine and tumble dryer.

Thanks for the info.

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[Andrew Gabriel]

Yes, usually with 3 connections (although one of them might be the case mounting bolt if it has a metal case).

I opened up a dishwasher some time back for an unrelated problem, and discovered the filter had blown up some time earlier, unknown to me as it hadn't taken out the fuse. The black soot marks extended a couple of inches from it. It was also powered all the time (before the on/off switch). I just removed what was left of it, and the machine has been without one ever since.

[Paul]

on my machine which was two years old where the cable enters the machine there was a largish square plastic thing that acts as a cable clamp, on the back of that was the filter. on mine the capacitor was a small oblong thing that plugged into the back of the mains inlet. i cut the mains lead at the filter and put crimps on it and used a generic filter that had spade connections on it. the filter i took off was very black and must have been on its way out for sometime.

Paul

[The Natural Philosopher]

Possibly useless info, but my hotpoint washing machine started doing that - traced it to a winding to earth leak on the drum motor - new motor fixed it.

worth whiping out the motor and cheacking resistance between all mains wires and the frame ..