F71C765BT0 Frigidaire Dishwasher

I looked under and found that 2 brass nuts that secured the heater element through the base housing of the dishwasher has split down each side of the nut and no longer was tight enough to keep water from leaking around either end of the heater element. I powered down the dishwasher at the circuit breaker and then reached under the dishwa ... Read more sher and pulled away the 2 wires that were attached to each side of the heater element. I removed the two nuts and replaced them with the parts I ordered from partselect.com. I then put the appropriate wires back at the end of the heater element and ran the dishwasher to check for leaks. No leaks... it was fixed.

First I noticed that the old gasket had disintergrated along the bottom. Next I removed the the gasket being careful to observe how it was installed. There are these notched areas of the gasket that belong in the lower corners. I think the notches are designed to help hold the gasket in place and make the gasket bend around the corner. ... Read more The gasket made closing the door very hard at first but after one wash cycle the fit became much more comfortable. The heat probably made the gasket more pliable. Problem solved.

I started by dismantling my dishwasher from the top down, beginning with the water distributor propellor. Beneath that was a plastic filter that crumbled when you touched it, and basically came off in my hands. Eventually, I figured out that the motor could be removed when accessed from underneath, and once I got it out I just pulled ev ... Read more erything apart. Some plastic parts only needed descaling, but others were essentially rotten. Both impellers were in particularly bad shape - their blades were broken off and their shafts were literally fused to the axle of the motor - I had to use a wood chisel & hammer to carve them off!

Putting everything back together was fairly straight forward - I wish some of the diagrams included with the parts were a little more detailed, but I found that if I paid close attention to the design of every part there was some logic to how they fit with one another. The only real problem I had was with the filter cover - this part had a needlessly complicated attachment design that required a special Frigidaire tool to snap into place that I did not have - ultimately I had to modify the part to get it to fit in place and then devise another means of securing it.

In the end, everything worked out fine - the dishwasher has never worked or sounded better!

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A few days after I got the dishwasher working again, my garbage disposal jammed. Upon inspection, I determined that a blade from the lower impeller of my dishwasher was the culprit! Dispirited, I began the tedious process of taking apart the dishwasher again, expecting to find a shattered impeller that I must have somehow installed incorrectly. But when I got everything open, the lower impeller looked perfect! It must have been a blade from the old impeller that jammed my disposal. As a head's up, if your own dishwasher suffers a mechanical failure, be sure none of the parts wind up in your disposal.