Recently the pin that holds the detergent lid open on the inside of the door broke. I ordered a new pin, spring and lid so I could repair. I installed all three pieces but the door does not pop open and stay open as it should. I have not been able to figure out the trick for situating the spring so that it does its job. I have seen all of the diagrams but nothing that details the actual installation steps. Please help if you can.

Thanks to the previous poster for the instructions. With your instructions and a photo of my parents' dishwasher, I was able to install a new spring. I was tired of setting a timer to add the detergent. I wanted to share my photo

Thank you! the picture and the description were both helpful. The use of the phillips head was also a key.

I fixed it!

I tried the above instructions and did not have any success. I had an idea and it worked really good for me so I thought I would share it!

The trick is, you need to install the pin with the spring before you do anything with the lid. Then you can use a rubber band to coil the spring and hold it in place while you snap the lid onto the pin.

Here are my instructions:

1. Make sure the spring is in the correct orientation (see photo above)and that the pin is fully inserted through both holes on the door.

2. Thread a rubber band between the pin and the washer door and leave yourself a nice sized loop sticking up. You are going to "lasso" the two ends of the spring with this loop.

2. Rotate the spring so that the two little points are up in the air. The flat part of the spring will not be pushing into the groove. You do not want there to be any tension in the spring at this time.

3. Use this loop to go around both of the little ends of the spring that are sticking up in the air.

4. Pull on the rubber band so the flat part of the spring rests in the groove and you will pull the two spring ends around to the other side of the pin. This is where you have added the coil tension to the spring.

5. Keep tension on the rubber band with one hand and make sure the pin stays fully engaged in both holes while you grab the lid with your other hand.

6. Position the lid so the little ends of the spring are inside the little recess in the middle of the lid. Note: You might want to snap the first lid hinge onto the pin at this point. It will help to keep the lid in place while you work.

7. Snap the rest of the lid hinges onto the pin (4 snap points in all) while making sure that the spring ends stay captured in the recess.

8. Everything should be in place now. Let the tension off the rubber band and the lid should go to the open position.

9. Cut the rubber band by the spring and pull it free. It should be wedged into the spring coil and a little difficult to pull out so cut it as close to the coil as possible so you are not pulling a long length of rubber band through it. A razor blade works well for this.

10. You are done! Test the lid to make sure you can close it and that it snaps to the open position when you release the mechanism.

I hope this is helpful to you and easier that the above method.

When My hubby is away, I can't sleep so I do things w/o taking away his man card... Like fix the dishwasher :-) My spring just slipped out of place.

Thank you so much for the rubber band lasso Idea. My dishwasher is now snapping open again. I had trouble feeding the rubber band past the post but using a twist tie as a needle threader did the job! :)