The short answer
On an ADB dishwasher, poor cleaning or drying is most often water that is not hot enough or detergent that is not being released, which produces poor results on a machine with nothing mechanically wrong with it. The causes below are in likelihood order, cheapest first; working down that order costs less than starting with the part that sounds most alarming.
What you actually observe
- White chalky film on glassware that wipes off — Hard water and rinse aid rather than soil.
- A gritty deposit on the inside of cups and bowls — Soil is being recirculated rather than filtered out and drained away.
- Detergent left undissolved in the dispenser — The dispenser did not open, or there was no hot water at the moment it did.
- The cycle finishes far faster than it used to — NEAR MISS: a sensor-driven cycle cutting short usually points at water temperature or fill, which is worth reading on the will-not-start and fill side.
- Body: The ADB listings carry a masked suffix in the spine, so the trailing characters on your rating plate will differ from the table without changing the diagnosis.
Ranked causes on these ADB models
- 1. Blocked spray-arm jets — Take the arms off, hold them to the light and look through the jets. A partly blocked arm still turns, so it sounds right, and it leaves an arc of the rack untouched every cycle. It leads across the ADB revisions because the drain path is one of the things the revision numbers left alone.
- 2. Water that is not hot enough — Detergent needs heat to work, and a machine fed lukewarm water will run a full cycle and leave a greasy film on everything. Running the kitchen tap hot before starting the machine is not a superstition; it is how the first fill gets hot water instead of the contents of the pipe. Second on ADB because the part above it fails more often and is cheaper to prove.
- 3. The filter and sump — It is the first thing to check because it is the commonest cause by a distance, it needs no tools, and a blocked filter also starves the spray arms of pressure.
- 4. Loading that blocks the arms — A tray, a chopping board or a tall handle standing in the arm's path stops it turning, and an arm that is not turning washes one stripe of the rack and nothing else.
Check in this order on the ADB platform
- 1. Remove each arm and hold it up to the light — A partly blocked arm still turns, so it cannot be judged by sound.
- 2. Run the kitchen tap until it is hot before starting a cycle — Separates a detergent-temperature problem from a machine problem in one wash.
- 3. Pull the filter out and look at it before anything else — The commonest cause, no tools, and it changes the meaning of everything downstream.
Before you open anything
Safety
Isolate before any panel or the sump comes off. Unplug the machine or switch off its breaker, and treat a capacitor as charged after the power is gone. Assume there is broken glass in the filter every time, and never run the machine with the filter left out to see whether it washes better.
Models in the ADB family — The listings this family covers; it is a family page, not a model page.
Reference| Model number | Family key |
|---|---|
| ADB1100AW**-02 | amana:dishwasher:adb |
| ADB1300AF** | amana:dishwasher:adb |
| ADB1300AF**-05 | amana:dishwasher:adb |
| ADB1300AF**-06 | amana:dishwasher:adb |
| ADB1300AF**-07 | amana:dishwasher:adb |
| ADB1300AF**-08 | amana:dishwasher:adb |
| ADB1300AF**-09 | amana:dishwasher:adb |
| ADB1300AF**-10 | amana:dishwasher:adb |
| ADB1300AF**-11 | amana:dishwasher:adb |
| ADB1300AF**-12 | amana:dishwasher:adb |
| ADB1300AF**-13 | amana:dishwasher:adb |
| ADB1300AF**-14 | amana:dishwasher:adb |
| ADB1400AG** | amana:dishwasher:adb |
| ADB1400AM** | amana:dishwasher:adb |
| ADB1400AM**-01 | amana:dishwasher:adb |
| ADB1400AM**-02 | amana:dishwasher:adb |
| ADB1400AM**-03 | amana:dishwasher:adb |
| ADB1500AD** | amana:dishwasher:adb |
| ADB1500AD**-01 | amana:dishwasher:adb |
| ADB1500AD**-02 | amana:dishwasher:adb |
| ADB1500AD**-03 | amana:dishwasher:adb |
| ADB1500AD**-04 | amana:dishwasher:adb |
| ADB1500AD**-05 | amana:dishwasher:adb |
| ADB1500AD**-06 | amana:dishwasher:adb |
| ADB1500AM** | amana:dishwasher:adb |
| ADB1700AD** | amana:dishwasher:adb |
| ADB1700AD**-02 | amana:dishwasher:adb |
| ADB1700AD**-03 | amana:dishwasher:adb |
When to call a technician
Call once the filter, the arms, the load, the water temperature and the detergent are all clean and the results have not changed. What is left is the pump, the diverter or the control, and none of those is an owner part.
The other symptoms covered for this family
Lead Appliance Repair Technician · 12 years experience
Experienced technician with 12 years specializing in washing machine and dryer repairs across all major brands.
