Help! My LG Dishwasher LDF6920ST Door is Broken!

I’m beginning to think my LG LDF6920ST dishwasher is a lemon.  After I fixed the leak in my other post, the door started falling down without any resistance.  Obviously something else is broken!  But it’s my only dishwasher and the prospect of buying a new appliance just doesn’t get me very excited.  And besides, when it works it does a pretty good job.

This time, I figured I’d just call a service technician since I just didn’t want to fool with it and I had a lot of other things that were stressing me out.  It was a good thing it happened on a weekend, because after the initial frustration and annoyance and my declaring to everyone in the family that I was sure I couldn’t fix it this time, my curiosity started getting the better of me.  I’m sure there’s some kind of hinge or something…

For me, the initial shock of something large and expensive not working gets me all frustrated.  I guess it somehow triggers my fight or flight reflex and when it comes to repairs, my first response is flight (along with, “I wonder how much this is gonna cost me?!”), but once the adrenaline works its way out of my system, then the fight starts working on me… c’mon, how hard can it be?

The good news is this is another really easy repair.  The hardest part of the whole process is unscrewing your dishwasher from the cabinet, and in my case it wasn’t even screwed in.  Oh yea, and also going on line and ordering the part.  As if that’s hard.

The LG LDF6920ST door uses a spring connected to a thin rope to provide resistance to the door.  In my case the string broke – on both sides of the door – and with no resistance, the door just flops open.  And this is a heavy door!

The repair is easy.  Once you un-mount the dishwasher from the cabinet, you slide it out about 8 inches or so to do the repair.  In addition to showing you some pictures, I have some tips on the repair.

Un-Mounting

Your dishwasher, if it’s screwed into the cabinet, it’s either screwed to the countertop through 2 metal brackets or through the sides of the dishwasher into the cabinet.  If it’s a countertop mount, you’ll need to sit on the floor so you can look at the underside of the cabinet and unscrew the mounting screws.

If it’s side mounted, you’ll need a thin flathead screwdriver to pry the plastic covers off from the inside sides of the dishwasher tub (there’s one on each side) and then use a Phillips head screwdriver to remove the screws.

Pulling the Dishwasher Out

Once you’ve unmounted the dishwasher, you’ll need to slide it out from the cabinet.  Do this slowly using the door at first to gently pull it forward.  If you seem to have excessive resistance, make sure the mounting brackets aren’t catching on anything.  You also may run into some trouble if the “legs” of the dishwasher are catching on any flooring material.  To check that, unscrew the splash panel from the bottom of the dishwasher – that’s the piece of metal that is at the bottom, right by the floor.  This will reveal the legs, which are plastic and can be screwed to raise or lower then front of the dishwasher.

Once you have the dishwasher pulled out from the cabinet, look on the sides.  You will likely see the broken rope and you may see the spring as well, however mine had fallen down in between the dishwasher and the sides of the cabinet (here’s a helpful little tool
for getting your spring out if you can’t grab it).

Use the replacement dishwasher hinge spring and hinge cable tension cord (you can also get these parts from Sears PartsDirect) to replace your broken ones.  Keep in mind that if only one of them broke, the other one is probably not far behind, so you might as well replace them both, especially since the parts are so cheap.  The tension cord attaches to the hinge at the bottom of the door and then connects to the bottom of the spring.

Don’t try to take the broken tension cord off when the door is in the closed position.  It jams against a screw and is too hard to force off.  Just open the door and make it easy on yourself.

The top of the spring then hooks on the little lip attached to the side of the dishwasher about 2/3 up the side.  Closing the door when you’re replacing the springs and tension cord with make the repair a lot easier otherwise it’ll be you vs. the spring to see who’s stronger.

That’s pretty much it.  Then carefully slide the dishwasher back into the cabinet and re-mount it to the cabinet with the screws and you’re done.  This should be a 20-30 minute repair (and that includes putting your screwdrivers away when you’re done!).