Steve Kraus wrote in
:

I had this happen on a KitchenAide which did it a lot but not 100% of
the time. Even had a serviceman out who replaced the entire
(electromechanical) timer but it would still do it.

On this machine, unlike, say, a washing machine where everything stops
until the water reaches whatever the desired level is, as long as it
takes, the water fill was simply based on the timer turning the valve
on for a certain number of seconds. I presume there are dishwashers
that do actually sense water level but this one doesn't.

The little float switch only was there to prevent the water from
getting too high (it interrupts current to the fill valve). The timer
doesn't halt and wait for the float to lift or anything like that.
You just get so many seconds of fill valve "on" time and that was
that.

I was finally able to catch it acting up and saw that power was going
to the fill valve but water wasn't going in so obviously the valve
itself was the culprit. I pulled the wires from the valve's solenoid
coil and found it open (dead). Turned out that the valve had a
thermal fault--after so many seconds of power on the solenoid would
get hot and become electrically open--turning off the water flow.
When it cooled down it would act normal so it was hard to find.

Those types suck. Especially if you don't know what you're doing to start
with.


Fortunately I had saved the fill valve off an older KitchenAide that
had been replaced after 10 years of service when the main seal failed
and water had damaged the motor. The old valve was a little different
so after mounting it and hooking up the hot water copper line I had to
get a length of hose to connect it to the water fill / vacuum break
thing on the side of the machine as the orginal tube was a bit too
short to agree with the new (old) valve. That was a number of years
ago and it's been fine ever since.

Stupid machines...:-)