Bosch SGS5313GB

Had my SGS5312 for around 14 years. No problems whatsoever until now. I put its longevity down to regular cleaning and junk removal from the various nooks and crannies. Currently have a complete failure to take water on board and debating whether or not to spend the money on bringing a service engineer out to deal with a fourteen year old machine or not. Would happily buy another one.

Hi - had mine for 11 years! Still going strong but board replaced once (after 5 years) and resoldered twice since (after I found this excellent site!)

Machine has now broken down again, so got QER to repair board - they say they found normal problem with heater circuit burnout, but symptoms still occur with repaired board - on Quick program, gets to "rinse" and jams, on heating programs only gets to wash then jams. Pump, heater etc. all working. Can anyone suggest what I can try next (other than buying a new machine....!) Thanks!

Thanks to all those who posted the fix details here... I too had the relay pin problem. Dishwasher fixed in-situ, start-to-finish 11 minutes (got to love electric screwdrivers and gas-powered soldering irons).

As a practicing electronics engineer designing products, I still haven't decided whether it's a design fault or just poor design... in any case, there was nothing conservative in the relay choice - and there are testing techniques (heat-sensitive camera) that would have identified the issue at the prototype stage - so it's certainly a quality issue! I would have expected Bosch to be very pro-active about repairing at nominal cost.

I've owned this Bosch dishwasher for 10 years and had the same problem a number of times - wash gets most of the way through the cycle and then stops almost at the end, doesn't drain the final rinse. Other than this problem, we love the dishwasher, it's silent and very efficient and the wife wasn't happy about replacing it (not just a question of cost but the dishwasher actually does a decent job - when it works!).

For the first few times, I was able to fix it by applying a soldering iron to the relay pin that was sooty black (the recommended solution described in a number of forums on this problem) but after a while, it too failed to fix the problem. I ran all the diagnostic tests recommended for this model but it didn't show up any problems.

On the verge of buying a replacement Controller Board ($135+S&H), I decided to try one more thing based on the following thought - if the current is so high that it would cause such arcing (the soot on the relay pin), wonder what else it might impact? Nothing ventured nothing gained, and since the fallback was to buy a replacement board anyway, I removed the relay from the board and decided to run a couple of tests. After finding the relay spec, I discovered that it was a 12vdc relay rated to handle up to 10amps, DC or AC. In the unpowered position, it is closed between pins 1 and 4 and open between 1 and 3 (coil pins are 2 and 5). I applied 12vdc to the relay (using a car battery) and it seemed to work as it was supposed to - how disappointing.

Well, since I had already taken the relay off, I decided to go one step further - the destructive step. I cut the plastic shell off the relay and bingo - there it was. One side of the relay contact points contained so much soot, you could have started you own coal mine! Clean away the soot and the points look like the surface of the moon - so pitted that not even a miniature moon-buggy would have been able to traverse its surface. It's a wonder that it wouldn't work.

I'm not sure if the current through the relay in normal operating conditions is anywhere near the 11 amps the heater is supposed to draw (it makes sense that it would be since, after all, this is the heater relay) but if so, herein lies the problem.

The brilliant engineers at Bosch while designing a pretty decent dishwasher, actually missed on this component. They've used a relay that simply isn't up to the job! Even though my tests showed that the relay still seemed to function in a simple power-on test, the only thing that makes sense to me is that since I wasn't drawing a heavy enough current through the relay contact points, it would behave fine under low current conditions.

I ordered in a replacement from Mouser (www.mouser.com), part number: 769-JS1-12V, price $1.29 (+S&H). That's right - One Dollar and Twenty-nine cents!!! And a dozen washes later, our beloved dishwasher is back from the dead and working consistently. Of course, as most of you realize, this just fixes the problem for a while since, even if this is the relay originally recommended by Bosch, it's not the right relay for the job. I ordered in a couple of spare relays - if I can keep the dishwasher going for another ten years, we've got more than our money's worth.

One further recommendation - if you put a heat sink on the relay pin on the Controller Board that usually soots right up, it will likely increase the life of this fix. I couldn't find a commercial heat sink to fit the job, so I made my own. I did this by (a) taking a piece of standard plumbing " copper pipe, (b) cut off a 1/2 inch length, (c) cut it along its length and flattened it, and (d) trimmed it to approx. " by ". I bent it to right angle along one length (this is necessary since, once installed, it needs to not interfere with the plastic enclosure that surrounds the Board).

Examine the Board very carefully and you will find that there are two other pins in line with the (sooty) relay pin directly connected to it through the Board's printed circuit. Check with an ohm meter and ensure you have the right two pin - as with anything else in electronics, doing it wrong could be disastrous. Solder the heat sink to all three pins, the idea being that it not only acts as a heat sink but a larger electrical conduit for this heavy current. Build the solder up in a blob to the height of the pins, especially the relay pin, to maximize the surface area of contact for current flow.

Warning: Do not attempt this fix unless you understand exactly what you are doing. This is not a time to be learning on the job, considering the potential for disaster. You have been warned!

My Bosch sgs5312gb is now about to be on its third control panel repair in 8 years - I would never buy another one without consulting a review site first. All of the reviewers have the same problem - joints in the control panel that fail, leading to everlasting cold washes and suds in the bottom.

I was the 6th person to review this machine on this string. The new pcb broke down again a couple of weeks ago. I did not have any electrical solder to repair the broken joint on a pin in the pcb (as is the usual complaint). So I used plumbing solder which is probably harder and melts at a higher temp. It is now fixed again and we will have to see how long it lasts this time. The machine is now about 6 or 7 years old. The PCB seems to have about 3 years use our of it - if you are lucky!

Thought i'd add my experience. My brother has a Siemens dishwasher but it has the same control pcb as the Bosch. This is the second time it has blown up so i took a look at it for him, found this website, did the link on the pcb as the pcb plane had blown as everyone has also experienced. This still did not fix the problem. Noticed one the the driver ic's had a piece of the plastic casing blown off the top, the MC1413 - 7 darlington transistors in a single ic. Checked it with the power off across each transistor and found 3 had blown. I couldn't find an exact replacement but found an MC1413DG from Farnell , cost £0.49 plus vat (luckily i have an account with them and they very kindly sent me a free of charge sample). The only difference is the temperature range, this ic works down to -25 deg instead of -40 deg. Pretty sure it doesn't get that cold in my brothers house. Changed the ic and now works fine again. I was pretty sure the microcontroller was ok as my brother told me that when he turned the machine on he could select a program and the LEDs on the front went through a sequence as normal but nothing else happened. If you have never done rework on surface mount components before i wouldn't recommend you try this yourself as the ic's are glued to the pcb and you can damage the pcb trying to remove it, however if you have to buy a new board anyway then you've got nothing to lose.

I have a Bosch SGS 5312/12 for 6 years on which the water would not get hot, I thought it was the element until I found this review centre. I would like to thank all who put the repair details on.

Yes my pin was blackened so I put the fix in place. The hardest part of taking it apart was the clips on the plastic casing and putting them back on. Now the machine runs like a dream. Thanks again to all

I have had the Bosch SGS5313GB Dishwasher for a few years. It too would not heat up and would just continue in the wash cycle. Having found this site I followed previous contributors advice for repairing the PCB by re-soldering the terminal. As others have said it was blackened and so easy to identify. Clean it up, resolder and now everything works perfectly.

I am not an electrical engineer, but I do own a soldering iron. It really wasn't difficult. In fact the most difficult thing was getting the polythene cover back on the pcb which was a little tricky and needed patience

Fantastic site. Came back from hols to face a 4 year old broken Bosch SGS5312GBDishwasher just died with no sign of life. Spent 15 minutes finding this site 10 minutes to find Davids review of 7th July 04 followed the instructions. The fault was just has many had seen (burt terminal on relay on PCB). Bridged pin to others on the same circuit, put back together - works fine !! All within an hour of coming home !! Lots of browny point in the bank !! Thanks again.