A blinking clean light is our newest popular money making service call. On all recent and current Whirlpool products, and there are a great many, any failure in the heater circuit causes the dishwasher to shut down and often blink the clean light.
This self-diagnosis has changed year to year. On early designs when the heater circuit failed nothing happened, aside from poor cleaning. In the next revision, an internal water temperature check was made during wash. The computer was looking for an increase of 1 deg per minute over a 10 minute interval. If that did not happen, the unit shut down and blinked the clean light seven times. By cycling power, the computer would reset and try again. Usually the failure would reappear and shut the unit down in mid-cycle. Unfortunately, diagnosis takes alot of time on this style because you can't hurry up the computer and must baby sit the unit.
The latest iteration is more complicated. A heater circuit failure shuts the unit down completely, blinking the clean light. To clear the error requires entering the diagnostic mode. To do so press:
HighTemp/SaniWash followed by AirDry/NoHeat/EnergySaver twice in succession. You will only find one set of combinations on each unit. This will be two sets of hits. See the following video:
All the indicator lights will come on. Hitting cancel twice will clear the computer.
Of course, this will do you no good if the heater circuit is faulty. The error will return unless you repair the heater circuit or replace the computer.
Testing the heater circuit
Initially, I was silly enough to pull the unit out from the cabinet to ohms test the heater circuit. This is OK but there is a much easier way. By opening the upper console the computer is accessed and the heater circuit can be tested. The heater is in series with a high limit thermostat and fed by a white neutral and a white wire with a red tracer. Both these wires are in the console. Pull the correct molex connector from the board and run an ohms check between the wh/red and white neutral; the red one in the molex and the white in various places.
An open circuit means that either the heater or limit is open - most likely the heater. A closed circuit means that the board is not sending 110vac to the circuit. This is usually a melted out solder joint in the board. Replace the board.
With luck this information will be in a tech sheet behind the kick plate. If not, you will find it in our model specific files. The tech sheets tend to make the diagnosis more complicated than it really is. It all boils down to a new heater or a new board! On many models the heater and board come as one kit; you cannot buy just one.