Thread Number: 15784
Improving the GE
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Post# 264715   2/12/2008 at 23:38 (5,889 days old) by roto204 (Tucson, AZ)        

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In this thread, I'll focus on what I did to improve the wash action of a circa-2000 Kenmore-branded GE dishwasher that was installed in our condo.

I've read so many posts of dedicated GE followers who swore that their dishwashers delivered superior results, so I figured that--with a few modifications--I could turn the GE into a machine that consistently delivered clean dishes, even for a dolt like me who apparently could not properly "gel" with the nuances of the GE design.






Post# 264716 , Reply# 1   2/12/2008 at 23:40 (5,889 days old) by roto204 (Tucson, AZ)        
Seems simple enough

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Here we begin with our sample specimen:

Post# 264717 , Reply# 2   2/12/2008 at 23:41 (5,889 days old) by roto204 (Tucson, AZ)        
Step one: Change wash-arms

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One of my major beefs with the GE design is the apparent celebration of plastic. Here, we see the wash-arm with its huge holes, and plasticky form.



Post# 264719 , Reply# 3   2/12/2008 at 23:41 (5,889 days old) by roto204 (Tucson, AZ)        
Switch to metal

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Instead of opting for an old-style GE metal wash arm (with even larger holes), I decided to go with something a little sturdier, and with better-formed jets:

Post# 264720 , Reply# 4   2/12/2008 at 23:43 (5,889 days old) by roto204 (Tucson, AZ)        
Step two: Better buttons

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The GE cleans well enough if you select Pots and Pans, which seems to run the Calrod all the time, and produces an effect very reminiscent of the Thermador/Waste King Steam Machines.



Post# 264721 , Reply# 5   2/12/2008 at 23:44 (5,889 days old) by roto204 (Tucson, AZ)        
Voila!

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However, the plastic buttons need to go. A quick transplant of a control panel, and a dash of chromey, metal pushbuttons. Voila!

Post# 264723 , Reply# 6   2/12/2008 at 23:49 (5,889 days old) by roto204 (Tucson, AZ)        
Step three: Sturdier handle

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I love the engineering brilliance behind the cantilever-type door latch, but I'm looking for something a little simpler.

I selected this model, which feels nice and sturdy, and only required a little bit of notching in the control panel.


Post# 264725 , Reply# 7   2/12/2008 at 23:51 (5,889 days old) by roto204 (Tucson, AZ)        
And then, just replace the panels!

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While I was making some modifications to the Perma-Tuf tank, I accidentally cut a stray hole. Oops!

I replaced the tank with a metal and porcelain one that should hold up better.

After that, with a little trim and some new color panels, we were all set to go!

Note the lower-right of the picture. Remember, when mod'ding your machine, keep your motivation in focus, and remember to reward a job well done!


Post# 264726 , Reply# 8   2/12/2008 at 23:54 (5,889 days old) by roto204 (Tucson, AZ)        
Free ninety-nine

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Okay, enough kidding ;-)

This machine came from a lovely couple in Lafayette who decided the 21 needed to go because stainless-steel is in.

Well, I certainly applaud that decision!

It was free.

This is the exact model my mom had when she ground her teeth and bought her first KitchenAid in the late eighties.

It's a Whirlpool unit, but cleans stellarly and is oh-so-quiet. This pump/filter module is incredible, compared to the very disappointing 23 series I had with the Whirlpool Power-Clean type module.

Now, if I can *just* get the boys to remember to press the Energy Saver dry button when they select the cycle, we'll be set.


Post# 264729 , Reply# 9   2/12/2008 at 23:57 (5,889 days old) by roto204 (Tucson, AZ)        
I do have to say, though...

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Is there an easy way to level a KitchenAid? Good Lord, it took me forty-five minutes with the level to get it both up to counter height and level.

I started confessing to things I never did.

Anyone have any good pointers? After all, for our hobby, this sort of exercise has to become a life-skill... :-)


Post# 264735 , Reply# 10   2/13/2008 at 00:22 (5,889 days old) by volvoguy87 (Cincinnati, OH)        
A definate improvement!

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Sometimes, when you mod a not-so-great appliance you end up with something a lot like a better one.

A neighbor once had a Mercedes that spent more time in the shop than the mechanics. His goal was to swap out the engine, transmission, etc. with a Chevy 350, with a big chrome air cleaner on top of the engine with a big blue Chevy bow tie emblem on it. He wanted to take it to the Mercedes dealership which had taken so much of his money and time for an oil change. As they took his keys, he planned to say "oh by the way, I made some small improvements for the sake of reliability. They are pretty simple and straightforward, so once you open the hood they should be pretty obvious." He got rid of the car, so his chance never came, too bad.

Amazing isn't it, what a few mods can do?
Dave


Post# 264742 , Reply# 11   2/13/2008 at 05:36 (5,889 days old) by toggleswitch (New York City, NY)        

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CONGRATS.

Great to see you posting!

....and don't knock the "POS" GE, it would WAY outperform my particular model of modern KA by WP!


Post# 264744 , Reply# 12   2/13/2008 at 06:47 (5,888 days old) by brent-aucoin ()        
You are a transformer!

Yay Nate!
Great improvement! The 21 Series is a great dishwasher.
Is your water heating element in the sump?
If the element is in the sump, it is a Hobart pump. The way to tell the Whirlpool pumps, the heating element is not in the sump. Also, the Hobart pump and filter is smaller than the Whirlpool design. I have used both versions, and must say that Hobart is better in many ways. Both are good, but I like the Hobart design.
Did you notice that your top rack wash arm is clogged at the end? Looks like detergent.
Don't worry about running the heater for drying. It really does not use all that much power.
Enjoy your new toy. I mean dishwasher.
Brent


Post# 264747 , Reply# 13   2/13/2008 at 08:25 (5,888 days old) by toggleswitch (New York City, NY)        

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In the winter any heat generated by a hot dry is not wasted.

-except in parts of the country where the A/C is on!


Post# 264766 , Reply# 14   2/13/2008 at 10:10 (5,888 days old) by rp2813 (Sannazay)        

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Great score Nate! My 21 has performed perfectly since it was installed over 17 years ago. Good thing you snagged this one as even in the Bay Area 'burbs there has probably been a big slowdown in the whole equity line of credit scene as banks try to stop the hemorraging, so I suspect a lot of remodeling plans are ending up on hold. Gee whiz, I guess that means a lot of well built appliances that still perform perfectly will be staying put for a while longer. What a concept!

Post# 264801 , Reply# 15   2/13/2008 at 15:13 (5,888 days old) by tlee618 ()        

Nate that was a great find!! I am so happy for you and I know that you will be much happier with this machine. Way to go!!!!

Post# 264806 , Reply# 16   2/13/2008 at 15:25 (5,888 days old) by roto204 (Tucson, AZ)        
LOL!

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It was fun to check-in and see what you guys have been up to--I had to indulge in this little joke because it had been so long since I'd had some fun-time on the computer (usually, it's slaving away, trying to fix someone else's issue).

Okay, first off, I typoed; it's a 22-series, so this would be the Imperial to the Superba I had back in Tucson. (Though the 21 looks much like this, as you note.)

Dave--That's AWESOME. I would have loved to have seen the Mercedes with new innards ;-)

Toggles--No arguments here. Like I said, if you ran the GE on Pots/Pans, the whole cycle became a war of attrition, and the food eventually simply became tired to death and slid off the dishes. Still, the major bummer was no constant rinse; a scattering of food particles tended to festoon the upper part of the door liner. (Very reminiscent of what happened when you washed a filthy load in the Roto-Rack.) But yeah, in terms of cleaning performance, most modern machines pale.

Brent--LOL That's foamy detergent at the end of the wash arm. (I stopped it mid-cycle to snap a pic--notice that the "Normal" button is depressed in the pic of the pushbuttons.) It was busily washing dishes, and I had the audacity to disturb it :-)

Ralph--No kidding, and good point! We'll have to see if Craigslist reflects a similar drought in the meantime.

Terry--Thanks!! Now we just have to get you one. (Or a Hobart machine!) ;-)

I failed to mention they still had the manual-pack with the machine. Still sealed, untouched, in the original plastic. So, I guess they were good at learning how to run the machine through pure intuition--the manual is crisp, lovely, and untouched, just the way I remember reading it when I was back in the fourth grade...


Post# 266730 , Reply# 17   2/26/2008 at 13:43 (5,875 days old) by gansky1 (Omaha, The Home of the TV Dinner!)        

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You should patent this, Nate. Millions of apartment dwellers and new-home buyers would praise your name every day and maybe send you money!

Nice KA, how do you like it so far??


Post# 266828 , Reply# 18   2/27/2008 at 02:05 (5,875 days old) by frigilux (The Minnesota Prairie)        

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Nice DW, Nate! I was beginning to think we had another Dr. Frankenstein (ala the SuperUnimatic) on our hands, LOL.

Post# 266838 , Reply# 19   2/27/2008 at 06:24 (5,875 days old) by toggleswitch1 ()        

Ya know Nate has actually "Frankensteined-up" a DW, as we saw in Tucson, AZ.............

Now where is that pic of it.....


Post# 266843 , Reply# 20   2/27/2008 at 06:46 (5,874 days old) by gadgetgary (Bristol,CT)        
Now where is that pic of it.....

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Right here.....

Post# 266844 , Reply# 21   2/27/2008 at 06:47 (5,874 days old) by gadgetgary (Bristol,CT)        
Dishwasher

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In action......

Post# 266870 , Reply# 22   2/27/2008 at 09:52 (5,874 days old) by swestoyz (Cedar Falls, IA)        

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Very Clever Nate! Thanks for posting, good to see you back in action.

Post# 266927 , Reply# 23   2/27/2008 at 17:49 (5,874 days old) by johnb300m (Chicago)        

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what on earth is that frankestein? what was the point of doing that? what improvements did you make? waht does the machine do?

Post# 266963 , Reply# 24   2/27/2008 at 23:43 (5,874 days old) by mrcleanjeans (milwaukee wi)        

Kewl! Reminds me of the YK's Jet Tower

Post# 266973 , Reply# 25   2/28/2008 at 06:22 (5,874 days old) by toggleswitch1 ()        
Playing leads to development of social skills and mechanical

~What was the point of doing that?

Excercising creativity and engineering skills.

Well it certainly entertained the masses at the TUCSON, AZ wash-in.............


Post# 267017 , Reply# 26   2/28/2008 at 11:33 (5,873 days old) by roto204 (Tucson, AZ)        
LOL

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Sorry for dropping off, guys. LOL, Greg--I'm telling you! :-P The new KA works really well--I need to land it a new set of racks someday--the previous owner was a little tough on them, or else the vinyl was a little thin on the tines (or both)...that, and I get the impression she washed a lot of knives in the top rack sharp-side down. C'est la vie. It's weird to have a dishwasher where dirty dishes go in and clean things come out, though.

Togs and Gary--you're so fab! I'd damned near forgotten about that pseudo-Youngstown-Kitchens dishwasher we'd made for the wash-in.

The original idea was that Roger and I tried to engineer a spin-tube dishwasher a la Frigidaire, and see what would happen. (Yes, Greg, it would come pre-packed with a dish brush ;-) )

The problem was finding a bearing for the spin-tube that was both water-tight and allowed the horizontal tube to spin freely while pressurized. You can see, in the pic of the dishwasher not running, the tube through the back that originally diverted all the water from what was a plain GE dishwasher's pump all the way up to the top rack.

The main problem was that--as we found--Frigidaire's original method for mounting and securing the spin-tube was probably the best (no doubt they settled on that design for a reason, and equally undoubtedly, they did do a lot of R&D to get there, so...). However, it's hard to duplicate with plastic. Plastic expands and contracts, changes characteristics throughout the cycle as the water gets warmer and the interior does to, and we basically ran into a lot of binding issues.

When we weren't battling binding problems, we found that the back bearing tended to fan water out the back depending on how good the seal was, and you ran into two opposing issues: 1.) The seal is too good, and the tube binds when trying to spin, or 2.) The seal is poor, and you lose all the water pressure to drive your spray tube out the back of the bearing.

That, and the GE pump was tremendously anemic, and didn't provide a lot of pressure--if you remove the wash arm assembly from a GE dishwasher with a full charge of water, and run it with the door open, the pump will lob the water about four inches high. It actually looks more like a water feature. (You certainly won't get wet.)

Roger came up with a brilliant design wherein a sub-tube was mounted inside the spin-tube (it was about 1/8" smaller), and it had a honeycomb of slots cut in it, wherein the water would enter this sub-tube and pressurize the spin-tube. The result was a sort of hovercraft "cushion of water" between the inner and outer tube. This worked except when the holes in the outer tube passed over the slots and holes in the inner tube, whereupon an area of reduced pressure was created, and--bonk! The outer tube rubbed on the inner tube.

Short of machining a metal mechanism (which we didn't want to do, because the fun of that dishwasher was producing something keeping with the present materials, cost, performance, and market as current machines), we decided to rethink and go vertical.

The vertical tube utilized the original wash-arm support from the GE, which greatly simplified the mechanism by replacing our avant-garde bearing designs with something that actually, well, worked. The tube extended to a simple flatwasher bearing and bolt in the roof of the machine, which allowed it to spin in place (and, much to our chagrin, required frequent oiling to permit it to do so).

To accommodate the now-vertical tube and allow the racks to still pull out, I cut out the rack hump in the bottom rack with a hacksaw, and resealed the vinyl. I also had to cut out an equivalent section of the top rack.

A series of helical holes were drilled in the PVC to spray the dishes--I don't think I could legally say "wash." (The next major annoyance was having the holes plug-up with PVC shavings left on the inside of the spray tube. We used a piece of metal trim off a KitchenAid to ream all the trimmings out--how appropriate!)

Initial testing showed that it was too difficult to cant the jets in the tube sufficiently in plastic to provide good spray directionality, and thus, drive the spin motion of the tube. Metal flanges were attached to the spray tube to deflect four of the jets and were bent at an angle to help with this effect. The resulting deflected water was successful in applying a force sufficient to spin the tube (and these flanges were at the silverware-basket level, so the added bonus was getting a little extra Silver Shower action ;-) ).

The final addition was a constant-rinse unit up top, fashioned out of sheet-metal and screwed to the tank top, and rather like KitchenAid's little spinny units. This constant rinse was driven off the port intended for such on the GE pump, and the water was just directed down and into the top of the tank, wherein the constant-rinse deflected the water and (sort of) rotated.

All told, it was frickin' ridiculous, because:

-- You ended up with a Youngstown Kitchens dishwasher--already rated the best in history--but minus the racking intended for it.

-- You lost a huge amount of rack space because you had to accommodate cutouts for the tower.

-- The water pressure was low enough to make the top few jets of the tower pretty useless, so the constant rinse was critical. Poor filtration made good water coverage crucial, and plugged jets (due to food particles lodging in them) caused trouble.

-- The top bearing fouled-up all the time, and needed oiling (can you imagine oiling your dishwasher??). If one of the propulsion jets with the metal flange got a chunk of food stuck in it, the spray tube would stop rotating. (This near-stationary-but-wanting-desperately-to-rotate behavior was charmingly termed by onlookers as "TurboZone action.")

-- The behavior of the spray tube changed as the cycle progressed and the thermal properties of the spray tube and dishwasher tank changed.

-- Since all water originated from the center, this machine had to be loaded circularly like an impeller dishwasher. (Only you couldn't use the back of the rack.)

Overall, fun and educational to construct, and let's face it, anything is more entertaining with a Plexiglas door.

But I have a lot more respect for what Leslie deals with now ;-) I don't think we're going to go notch-out any marketshare with this design--even though it would be appropriately cost-competitive--I think it did cost about $25 to convert the GE entirely to the new design!


Post# 267032 , Reply# 27   2/28/2008 at 13:19 (5,873 days old) by johnb300m (Chicago)        

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wow, cool. i like that stuff.

thanks for the explanation.

i had a Haier dishwasher in my last apartment. Some might remember it. It was a bastard child of GE and Whirlpool engineering, born in China.

They had a WP style wash arm with a GE power tower.

The stupid Chinese angled the WP style jets too much inward. So I bent them out more and got much better action.
The Chinese also did something stupid where they made the jets on the outward facing ends of the wash arm too small. So they'd clog with food and nothing on the outter perimeter would get clean. So i drilled them out :)

Modifying is fun.

About the GE pump. From looking at the impeller design, it looks like it's designed for high volume and not pressure. It looks more like a boat prop than a proper impeller.

I think that's always been GE's strategy. Just a few very large fanned out jets. Don't need much of a pump for that.


Post# 267039 , Reply# 28   2/28/2008 at 14:38 (5,873 days old) by toggleswitch1 ()        
Modifying is fun.

*LOL*

You know you are trusted and loved by your mother when the oven of her gas stove won't light, you go in there with a drill and a bit, and she doesn't even leave the room!!!!

FEH! I tried adding a few small holes to the upper spray arm of my now defunct and GONE KA mess, without any great results I'm thinking it made already anemic pressure even worse.

Nate you have talent, boy! Somehow it figures that you got the vertical tower to spew good quantities, and get the job done.



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