Dishwasher Help Please

[shatto]

For a few months now, our five year old dishwasher has been on the fritz. Not working right. Below is a compendium of symptoms and what I've done:

1. Burned motor smell for a week or so. Still runs and smell is now gone.
2. Top rack stuff dirty. 1/2 of inside of a cup will be clean, the other untouched.
3. Cleaned, re-cleaned and cleaned the mineral build-up from the three washing arms by running bailing wire in holes and down arm. All holes clean.
Opened the door during operation to verify arms actually turning and they do.
4. Cussed a lot.
5. Run it with the bottom empty. Top cups n stuff still dirty. Plugged feed to bottom arm and top dishes were spotless.

So... I presume the motor no longer has the oomph to get water where it's needed with any pressure at all. And I suppose a new pump motor is the solution.
It cost a little less than half the cost of a new washer.

What do you think.

[BrendenF11]

Sounds like the motor is exactly what the problem is. Electric motors will run, albeit less efficiently before they burn out completely some times. If you were smelling the burned wires odds are the armature or bearings are burning out. Along with the fact that the water is obviously not reaching the top dishes at the proper velocity, and your cleaning of the washing arms should have freed it up if that was the problem. As long as there is no water leaking from underneath the machine, which would be the other cause of pressure loss, the motor should be the issue.