SaferProducts incident

Failure type

Fire / ignition

Incident narrative

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20190125-1DC20-1827887. Severity: Incident, No Injury. Product: KitchenAide KUDS301XBL (Dishwasher). Incident: The dishwasher completely quit working. A new load of dishes was ready to run but the unit would not start and no indicator light would come on. Some background: Unit was acting up for month or so with green light not coming on at end of cycle, no lights or buttons working, or blue light coming on but buttons not working and cannot cancel. Turning off circuit breaker and then on had been fixing the problem every time. On Saturday evening Jan 19, the circuit breaker �fix� did not work. I removed the front metal panel. Looking at the control module at the upper right, the problem was easy to see. The 4-wire plastic connector housing at the lower left of the control module was burned, positions #2 and #3, #3 seemed the worst (black wire) and positions #1 and #4 seemed fine From Left to Right, wire colors are #1 Blue (w/white stripe), #2 Blue (w/red stripe), #3 Black, #4 White Safety concern: I believe the connector as designed by the manufacturer is the problem as it is undersized to handle the electric current for the heater and motor. As such, arcing occurs at the metal junction between male and female part of each connector. This seems to be a chronic problem with dishwashers and in particular with the model which I have. Potential hazard is fire. Follow-up: Dishwasher now works perfectly and dishes are super clean and no film on dishes. My thinking is that the water is now hotter as the resistance in the burned terminal was limiting current to the heating element. I believe high water temperature is the best solution to prevent film and crud buildup. Action Recommended: be