Looking at the user manual, first four lights flashing (and pump running) indicates the 'Flood Switch' has been activated.
You need to check if the machine has really leaked into the bottom of the chassis.
As the pump has been running, very little water will still be in the unit, however best to grab a few towels anyway.
- Turn off and unplug the unit
- Slide machine out far enough that you can tip it on its side
- Looking from the front, tip it carefully onto your left hand side.
- Remove the 2 screws beside the front feet, holding the bottom plastic tray on.
- Slide plastic tray away from machine
- To remove bottom of machine remove two screws on lower front edge (now visible with the bottom plastic off) and two screws in bottom of machine near back of unit.
Bottom tray will now come away... be careful of the wires going to the flood sensor in the middle of the tray.
(The flood sensor is the Styrofoam block with the micro switch above it)
Is the tray wet?
If yes, you will now have to look for where / how the water is getting there.
If no (like mine) you will need to check the micro switch with a multimeter.
(Strongly recommend a good digital multimeter)
For the micro switch on my machine......
- The common pole of the switch has two pink(?) wires going to the same terminal on the side of the switch.
- The normally open terminal is in the middle of the three and has the brown (?) wire going to it.
- The normally closed terminal is furthest away from the common and has the red(?) wire going to it.
Check resistance between common (pink) and normally open (middle / brown wire) terminals.
ANY reading other than infinity is the cause of the problem!
(Mine had a reading of 3.2Meg Ohms!!)
Disconnect the brown (middle) wire from the switch and measure again between common and middle (normally open) terminals of the switch.
If the switch measures okay, you will now need to take the side off the machine.
Start by removing the top of the machine, remove two screws at top back, then slide top towards the back then lift off.
Once you have removed all the screws around the edge of the panel, the side will lift off.
Towards the bottom right hand corner of the unit you will see one of the control boards with all the wires running to it.
The wires from the switch run to the plastic 'edge connector' on the bottom edge of the board.
Gently pull the edge connector down off the bottom edge of the board.
Now measure resistance between common terminal of switch (two pink wires) and the connector on the brown wire.
With the edge connector off the control board you should read infinity but here I measured 3.2Meg Ohms.
I then gently unclipped (folded down) the back cover on the edge connector and scratched at the terminals where the wire joined.
It looked dry however the reading had now gone up to 20Meg Ohms.
A couple of minutes later the reading was infinity.
I clipped the back of the edge connector back up and again checked it was still infinity.
Reassembled the machine and it is working just fine.
No idea what caused the high resistance leakage in the edge connector (spider web?), however it was the cause of the 'flood detection'.
Good Luck with yours!
Electronics Tech, September 2012