One of the two flappers for the docking station broke off pretty early on in the life of this dishwasher. The two flappers are part of a larger molded rubber gasket part. The very thin piece of rubber holding the flapper onto this piece is what broke. Without the flapper, one of the two outlet ports for the adjustable height upper basket remains open and bleeds water pressure off the middle and upper spinner arms.

The only part KitchenAid seems to make available for replacement is the entire feed arm that goes from the inlet valve coming off the bottom wand manifold all the way up to the top spinner -- part #1 in their diagram -- which they want around $35 for.

Anyone else have this or similar problem with the docking station and any luck repairing it without replacing the entire feed arm? There are individual docking stations and even gaskets and flappers available for other models of dishwashers, but not this one.

It certainly seems Whirlpool Corp. included some planned obsolescence into the design of this dishwasher. This is just one example of several puny parts the design for which I consider to be defective.

KitchenAid used to have such a good reputation for quality, but this dishwasher is a real lemon.