So our Bosch dishwasher is coming up to 12 years old and has never had an issue (touch wood this continues for a while yet).

It has always been very quiet, but recently it seems to have been making a bit of a soft knocking sound.

Nothing dramatic, but I always thought maybe I had loaded it with something that was moving about - still cleaning well enough.

I finally noticed that if you spun the top washer arm around it was actually catching on the rear of the arm assembly - not enough to stop it - but enough to make a slight thump-thump sound.

I could see that over time (~12 years) part of the plastic assembly had probably warped a little - enough to cause the parts to no longer have 100% clearance.

I tried filing a little off the plastic on the end of the arm to no avail, and finally figured that we would have to live with the problem - but I decided to look on the Bosch support site anyway.

Amazing!

I found the model code, it then takes you through a set of parts drawings until you see the part and you just drag a little icon over the part and it shows you the details and cost.

The part was showing as about $56 but out of stock and that I should ring. They confirmed that they did actually have several of these in stock and let me order.

(I later found another NZ supplier that had the same part in stock - but for $95 + GST +freight).

The part has had several revisions and the new part has had the faulty bit re-engineered so should not suffer over time like the old one.

I am impressed that they had parts for a machine at 10+ years old and that the price was not over the top.

Well done Bosch.