You know when you try to do something helpful and nice without being asked, and it just backfires? That happened last week.
Our kids are old enough to load the dishwasher, and our other kids (we have multiple children) are old enough to empty the dishwasher, so I rarely see the inside of it. For some reason or other, the other day I noticed that the screen at the bottom had a bunch of food bits and fruit pits stuck to it. Our kids aren’t as careful about scraping plates as we would be!
I decided to spend some time pulling the bottom spinner arm assembly apart so that I could remove and clean the screen. After pulling it all apart, I cleaned the screen and put it back in. And shut the machine.
The next 2 days we noticed the dishwasher wasn’t cleaning as well, and I was disappointed because, having just cleaned it, it should be cleaning better than before I did the work.
I opened the door, and that’s when I noticed the melted bottom spin arm. You see, I had removed the arm, laid it to the side to remove the screen, and failed to replace the arm.
Instead, the arm lay to the side on top of the drying element. When we ran the dishwasher next, the drying element heated up and melted the dishwasher’s spin arm.
Perhaps if we hadn’t run the dishwasher while we were sleeping we may have smelled the melting plastic?
I took to the internet, to the Everything Store (Amazon) to see if I could find a relatively cheap and quick replacement part. After some careful measuring of the dishwasher spray arm mount (the part that it spins on) I realized the overall shape of the replacement spray arm is of little to no importance as long as it mounts properly.
Thanks to Prime Shipping, I had the replacement arm at my door the next day, for around $35. Sure, it’s $35 I didn’t have to spend if I had remembered to re-install the arm in the first place, but it was a relatively low-priced fix for my stupidity!
For all sorts of replacement dishwasher parts in Canada:
If you open your dishwasher and notice the dishes are still dirty, a possible cause is a faulty spray arm! This aftermarket dishwasher replacement part if compatible with many dishwasher brands like Kenmore, Gibson, Crosley, Frigidaire, etc.