If your dishwasher door will not open and when you pull the handle and it is just floating around inside, you have come to the right place!  My wife went to open our dishwasher and the handle was just floating around inside the bezel and it would not come open.  I thought about calling an appliance repair shop but I felt like I ought to be able to fix it and in this article I share with you how I did.  Here’s an example of some of the comments this article has received:

Thanks so much! My husband and I ordered the part from Amazon and got same day delivery for an extra $10. It came and with your help he was able to fix it. Wow, not even one day without a dishwasher and no service call! Fixed for $40 with tax and delivery! We’ll take it as I am sure we would have paid a significant sum more.

Dishwasher Door Will Not Open-How to Fix Broken Door Handle on KitchenAid Dishwasher KUDR24SE

Equipment:

• KitchenAid Sculptura Undercounter Dishwasher Model KUDR24SE or KUDY24SE

Step 1:  Locate a small LONG allen wrench and small vice grip.

In the video above I used a 4″ long 3mm allen wrench, which worked great.  Anything 1/8″ or smaller should be fine.  Lock the allen wrench as seen below:

Lock an allen wrench tightly in an vice grip like this

Step 2: Slide the short tip of the allen wrench down behind the door at the top, about 2 inches to the right (or left) of center.

Pry the latch up by twisting the vice grip clockwise (if you start to the right of center) to release the door

Step 3: With the allen wrench pointing straight down slide the allen wrench towards the center of the door until you run into the latch.

Step 4: Pry the latch up.

Once you have run into the latch you will turn the vice grip so that the tip of the allen wrench lifts up the latch.  Important: You will want to be pulling the door open as you do this so you don’t miss your chance when you get things just right and the latch is lifted.

Step 5: Jump down to the picture below of where I have the dishwasher open below.

If you follow these new steps 1 through five you will save yourself some time over the longer method I used when my

Original Article (Another Way to Open a Dishwasher Door That Will Not Open)

Just this evening my wife went to open the dishwasher and the door wouldn’t open.  The little handle you squeeze was just floating around inside the door.  I fiddled and fiddled with it hoping to get it to catch but couldn’t get it to open.  This poses a problem because you cannot take the door apart without opening up the dishwasher door, you can’t pull out the dishwasher without unscrewing the screws that are screwed up into the underneath side of our counter, and you can’t unscrew those screws without opening the door.  Oh, and the bezel of the dishwasher unscrews from the inside of the door so you can’t just pop off the bezel to get to the door latch mechanism.  I wasn’t sure how the door latch mechanism worked so that compounded the problem.

I figured out that you can take off the main front (metal) panel by removing the two screws on the bottom edge.  You must first take off the toe-kick panel and the lower panel first–all of their screws can be accessed from the front.  There are two screws on the toe-kick panel:

Left screw on toe-kick panel

Right screw on toe-kick panel

There possibly could be two screws on the bottom edge of the toe kick, depending on the installation:

Lower left possible screw location on the toe-kick plate

Lower right possible screw location of toe kick plate

Once you have the toe-kick panel removed you can see the underneath edge of the door panel.  There are two screw on the bottom edge that you need to remove:

Lower left screw location on the door panel

Lower right screw location of the door panel

Once you have removed those two screws you can slide the door panel straight down and then off.  Here’s what you’ll have once you get the door panel removed.

The main panel and foot panels removed

With the main panel off I could better see up underneath to where the door latch was.  The door handle was floating around in the way of seeing what was going on though.  After getting a cramped neck I was able to figure out what I needed to do to unlatch the door.  In the meantime I was able to remove the link rod that connects the handle to the latching mechanism (the metal part on the right in the picture below).  Be careful not to loose the little spring that is connected to the latching mechanism.

The Door handle (part 9743903), the pieces that broke off of it to get into this problem and the  link rod on the right.

After trying to pull on a few different things I discovered that in order to unlatch the door you must push up (toward the ceiling when you are laying on your back looking up at the door) on the part highlighted in red in the picture below.  In order to get this view I had to work the broken door handle (circled in yellow) out of the way the best I could.  I used a straightened close hanger to press on the place I marked with an X.  This is the edge of the latch mechanism that is closest to the outside of the dishwasher.

In yellow, the broken off (and floating around) handle, In red, the piece you need to push up on the X edge in order to unlatch the dishwasher

Presto, you have opened your dishwasher, what a relief.  You can then take off the top plastic bezel by unscrewing all the torx screws along the top of the inside of the dishwasher.  In order to remove the bezel you must only remove the top row of screws (the bottom side of the bezel hooks into the frame of the door):

Top Bezel torx screw locations

Ribbon Connector Clip

Here’s the parts diagram (From the Sears parts site here).  Parts 4, 5, and 9, are the ones we are really dealing with.  Number 9 is the one that is broken.

KitchenAid Dishwasher Model KUDR24SE Bezel part diagram

I ended up ordering the handle (part #9) which is part number 9743903 (imprinted in the plastic as well).  The best price I could find was at this link on amazon.com. Because it’s going to take a few days to get the part and we are going to be dirtying a lot of dishes in the meantime I decided I needed to make a way for us to continue to use the dishwasher without the part.  I thought about drilling a hole in the top of the bezel and either tying a string to the handle or drilling a hole in it and connecting a rod but I really didn’t want to drill a hole in the bezel.  I then decided to drill a hole in the trigger mechanism (highlighted in red above and I drilled very close to where the x is).  I then straightened a coat hanger and connected it to the trigger and ran it down out the opening where you would reach in to grab the handle.  If you push up on the hanger it unlatches it.  Here is what the hanger looked like:

And this is what it looks like connected to the latch mechanism:

And then with the bezel put back on:

Now we are back in business until the part comes in.

Update: The part arrived and I went to install it and then realized that I have another issue, that I didn’t realize was going to be a problem.  The bezel was cracked all the way through on one side of the opening where the handle protrudes:

Broken bezel handle-opening on a KitchenAid Sculptura Undercounter Dishwasher Model KUDR24SE

This break in the plastic allows the opening to expand and would cause problems with keeping the new handle locking in place.  I decided it was important to fix this too before moving on.  Luckily we had just run the dishwasher 🙂

I contemplated the different ways to fix this from putting a metal plate down and screwing it to the plastic to laying a different piece of plastic on it and drilling some random holes to allow the epoxy to adhere well to both pieces.  I then realized there is a slot just blow the broken piece in the picture above and I could glue a little block in there and that would do the trick.  So I actually took a shim and whittled it down to fit perfectly and then used 5-minute epoxy on it, clamped it tight, and then left it overnight:

The view from the bottom edge of the bezel showing the block of wood I epoxied in the slot that just happens to be there

Now that I reinstalled everything is working.  If this tutorial was helpful to you will you please leave a note sharing with others your success and any helpful tips that you learned in the process?  Please note that if you have not had an approved comment in the past, your comment will need to be approved before it shows up.  I read all comments so it will be approved soon.  And if you have any questions please put them in the comments and I’ll do my best to get right back with you.  Thanks, John.

Other stuff:

• User manual for this dishwasher (It won’t help you with this repair though)