OK, i havent gotten any help on this one yet, i guess everyone else is as busy as i am. today it just died. i tried the reset sequence and even tried heating the panel with a heat gun again. all to no avail. it is just dead. i disconnected the control panel and powered it on, sure enough the drain motor started. according to what i am reading this means a short in the control panel.
not so fast, i cant find a short in the panel. i looked to verify the cause since the cost of a new panel is over half the value of the unit.
i made sure i didnt have the polarity reversed on the leads (i have experience in electronic repair from some years ago, so i am not a novice, just not an applliance tech); i checked every point on the checklist. problem is, i cant find anything. every one of them is OPEN, even when depressed. this makes no sense. looking at the panel, and the little bit of a print supplied with the unit, there is no single component that could cause all of them to be open at once. of course, this could mean there is a problem with the control board that is shorting them all out, but since it started with minor problems, just the delay quit at first, then the LEDs began to indicate the wrong step in the cycle, etc., i am not sure about that one. something in it would have had to suddenly hit ALL the rest of them at the same time and short them out. a hit that strong surely would have been indicated by some other visual clue, like a burned lead or at least a brown spot on the control board where it overheated/overvoltage? BTW, the thermistor and door latches check good.
I am stumped. any help is greatly appreciated.