TL/DR: fixed the dishwasher by taking some of it apart and testing and cleaning things.

“Look at this,” my wife stormed. “These dishes are not clean.” Profanity followed. I think she’s been around me for too many years.

Yes, our GE Profile dishwasher has been giving us poor results a lot recently. It’s six years old but we generally only run it once or twice a week. Which, actually, could be bad for it. I learned from research this week that some systems use a count to recalibrate things.

I found and wrote down the model number and serial number. More research was done. Youtube videos were studied. We ran the machine for troubleshooting. Hot tip: with our machine, at least, there’s no need to run an entire cycle. If that’s not desired, just use whatever cancel feature is set up on your machine. With our machine, turn the start button on as if we’re going to start it, then hold the start button in for more than three seconds. When that happens, the cycle is canceled and the pumps drain the dishwasher.

Our symptoms beyond dirty dishes emerging from the clean cycle was also the soap not getting fully used/dissolved or even dispensed from its compartment on the door. Not to blow my own coronet, but we’re frulk (shorthand for frugal folk) and buy our dishwasher pods at Costco. But doing research, it appeared that the upper and lower arms might not be spinning.

To test the arms, it’s recommended that you note the arms’ positions (some companies refer to the arms as wands) and run the dishwasher for several minutes. You then interrupt the cycle, open the door and see if the arms have moved.

No. They hadn’t.

Next step is a little trickier. There’s a door latch sensor, I guess you call it at the top center of the dishwasher opening. Slipping a long but slender screwdriver in and holding the door open permitted me to see if the arms were spraying at all, or if anything was spraying, in fact. ‘Nother hot tip: if you do this method, make sure you’re ready for a little water to the face if the spray arms are working. Also be ready to pull the screwdriver back fast.

From all of the research and pondering, including listening to it, I concluded that I had to put the diverter assembly. In point of fact, it would be the last thing we did. Our DW uses a four port diverter with two tiny magnets. If they get gnarly, they can cause a problem.

So I removed the racks. We have three: a bottom one with the utensil basket, a top silverware drawer, and the middle rack, with bottle washers. The middle rack was a challenge. It’s an adjustable one and doesn’t use the standard end clips or levers. Instead, two hex screws, one on either side of the rack on the raise/lower mechanism, hold it in place, 7/16″ in a tight, tight spot. Once they’re removed, tabs are slipped out on either side, and then the drawer is pushed backward to clear quarter inch pegs.

After the racks were taken out, I removed the lower arm (turn the plastic locking mech to the left), unclipped and removed the water conduits, unscrewed and removed the micro filter, and then the macro filter. Now I could get to the diverter assembly, which sits in the bottom of the DW basin, in the middle. Two screws secure it. A third, which holds the water conduit to the utensil basket in place, had to be removed to free that conduit so that I could turn and free the diverter.

With all that done, I took a toothbrush and liquid dish soap and cleaned it all. I ran water through the wands and conduits to ensure they weren’t clogged or blocked. Then it was all put back together and a test conducted.

Yes, I put the screwdriver into the latch.

Yeah, I got a face full of warm water and water across the kitchen floor. But I laughed because it looked like success. I put the arms into a parallel position, noted that, and ran it again for a few minutes.

And yep, they were moving, baby.

It felt good to fix something again, but this one had my back and neck complaining after I was forced to work on my knees, bending in and reaching across the DW basin to undo things, remove them, and then put them back. After finishing, I told my wife, “Baby, I’m starting to feel like I’m beginning to get old.”

She replied, “You’re JUST STARTING to feel that?”

Yeah, I laughed.