Some time ago our dishwasher quit. It gave out a smoke (actually a very nasty smell of the burning plastic) and stopped draining water. “Never fear”, I said, whipping out my trusty Bosch drill and turning off the circuit breaker. Half and hour later I’ve noticed something black and twisted in the guts of the dishwasher’s underbelly, resembling a piece of plastic poo. Bringing it to the light of day showed a wire canister with a metal core, also known as solenoid. The core popped out of the canister, heated up and distorted all the plastic around it. So, it looked like it was time to go to the magic place, also known as the internet. After quit a bit of searching, with google being quite uncooperative I’ve stumbled on a blog that pointed me to repairclinic.com. They had the part but it was a bit more expensive than I would have expected for such a primitive component. But I had no choice, other sites sold it for even more. Ten days and $30 later I had the part in my hands, still in it’s genuine GE plastic wrap. What I saw next surprised me even more. The part was sold without the necessary plastic arm, the springs and the core (can you technically call it a solenoid if it does not have a core?). Why would they sell a part of a part? May be because the other parts of the part were also available for sale for equally outrageous prices? Quite possible, but I did not agree to it. I took the heat gun and melted the remaining plastic off the old core, molded the old arm back into it’s original shape and stripped the springs off the old part, stuck it all on the new canister I was sold under the name of a solenoid and stuck it all back into the bowels of the dishwasher. Viola! The dishwasher dishwashed perfectly.
Two things I’ve learned (besides the fact that a burned solenoid can be caused by a malfunctioning timer motor if you care to know):

• GE (maker of the dishwasher under the Kenmore brand) uses cheap and sub-par components to make its dishwashers
• GE sells parts for profit. Shameless profit. And they price the parts to get all the money they can from these who own their appliances.

So if I have a choice, I will stay away from GE as far as possible (the dishwasher came with the house by the way). As usual here is the photo of the offender, happily clicking away in its native habitat:

Update: the adventures continued when, after a month of good work, the second solenoid quit. This time it was fried in the closed state not letting any water enter into the dishwasher. Internet says that two fried solenoids in a row point to a malfunctioning timer (even though when I measured it earlier it was showing the correct resistance). The new one costs $120 so I am going to buy a new dishwasher this time.