AEg dishwasher, not washing - motor/capacitor?

[chris French]

Hi Folks,

Not been around for a while.

Our dishwasher, AEG Favorit 50700 has stopped washing (as in nothing happens in terms of water being pumped around. It fills and drains ok)

so I'm looking at a blockage/jamming of the circulation impeller, or a motor fault I guess. I can here a humming from the motor, and it will get warm. Would this happen if the motor capacitor died?

Since it looks like such an easy and cheap potential fix, maybe I should just change it anyway. I an't et to the impeller, without removing th base or something.

[Bob Minchin]

Are you sure that it is an induction motor? A physically small capacitor could well be a suppressor. Assuming an induction motor :- A jammed motor would hum as would one with a dead capacitor. You should be able to pick up a generic capacitor of a similar value on ebay Search for motor run capacitor followed by the value and mfd

hth

Bob

[harryagain]

The first thing is to see if the pump motor spins freely. If not, something is jammed in the pump. Usually there is access to the pump to clear jams.

If it spins freely and hums, this indicates one of the two motor windings is open circuit. If you can SAFELY give the motor a twirl while is is humming, it should run (in either direction) Only one direction is correct for the pump to work. All single phase motors need a run winding and a start winding, some energised only during starting, some permanently energised. The latter is more usual these days. The start winding may or may not have a capacitor, if so the capacitor could be US. The components can be cheacked if you have a multimeter, ie the motorwinding, the wiring to it and to a limited extent the capacitor

[Andrew Gabriel]

IME, they are always induction motors.

You can roughly test a capacitor by running it in series with a 40W mains filament lamp. It should light dimly.

Dishwasher pumps often fail due to water leaking past the shaft seal and into the motor bearing, where it quickly destroys it. It only needs a small amount of mechanical resistance to prevent the motor starting - they don't have much starting torque. I have repaired a pump when this happened, but they are not normally repairable and you'd be after a replacement unit.

[F]

Have a look in/ask at

Quick and accurate help.

[Bob Minchin]

I was not sure - we have never had a dishwashing machine. I married one

33 years ago and it is still working well.