Dishwasher has not been cleaning well lately. Not even completely removing liuid detergent from open tray. Seems like there's little pressure to the arms. Don't appear to be spinning. Removed arms and plastic tube leading to arms and all clear. Removed torques screws under bottom arm and only found a mesh screen which appears clean. Any suggestions!

I have a Frigidaire dishwasher that doesn't get much water to the upper arms (I'm replying here because it uses the exact same pump assembly). I replaced the pump assembly two weeks ago and the items on the top rack still wind up dirty.

After an experiment where I removed the 'check ball', I did some more research and ran across a post at 'appliance samurai' (http://**************************.com/forum1/7839.html) that explains how the little ball in the sump works to activate one set of arms at a time. The machine pauses briefly to switch to using the upper arms, and pauses longer to switch back to using the lower arms.

Now, the trick, which I'm hoping will help us all on our path to a proper repair: When you hear the lower arms spinning, hit the door latch and then re-close the door 1/2 a second later. You will then hear water go to the upper arms & you should hear the upper arms spinning. Later on, you may hear your machine stop for 3 seconds, after which you will hear the lower arms spinning again.

The problem with my machine is that the short pause apparently isn't long enough. Now that I know what I'm looking for I hear the machine do it, BUT it does not pause long enough for the switch to happen. If I stand by the machine and help it every time I hear the 1/4 second pause, I wind up with stunningly clean glasses in the top rack.

(on page 35 of this document: http://frigidaireservicetips.com/pdfs/463_9.pdf, they describe the magic "water/service' code, which will run a frigidaire/electrolux machine through its paces. Oddly enough, when I run this, the pause IS enough to activate the top arms. -- strange)