The Miele manual mentions for a maintenance cycle, you should run the Sanitize Cycle completely through with nothing inside. Adding a small amount of detergent is optional.

Personally I prefer to run one cycle with no detergent and look to see if the water is full of suds which would indicate a build up of detergent in which case more cleaning is required.

I've run mine with a washer cleaning product in the past. I haven't run one for a while, cause I run my wash temps very hot several times per week. I have 3 machines, lol, and love it. I have one the will go to 190f and I wash DH dirty hand towels at that temp. So I haven't thought about a cleaning cycle. I think I will try what @Cal recommends and check on the water quality during the wash cycle.

What a1an said: run it with either oxygen bleach or citric acid on the longest Sanitize cycle. If the washer shortens the cycle because it registered an empty drum, just open the door after the time decreased. This should reset the washer to run the longest cycle.

Also add hot, hot water to about where the glass door starts to tilt. This is the max level the washer accepts before draining and helps to really wash the drum.

Once I'm back in my home's WiFi, I'll link some videos.

The protocol is to run a sanitize cycle with no additions. Then see how thw machine works.

This is what I did: I poured some hot cleaning solution into the drawer as the washer was spinning at max speed and circulated it through the machine. This scrubbed the outer tub clean, simulating a cleaning cycle found on many washers these days.

WT. Must be machine inherent design. I've tried something similar but during the wash cycle and the water level stopped all activities and purged water. I suppose the water level is deactivated during the spin cycle. Going to give this a try when I eventually get mine back up and running,....

I added just enough water to keep the circulation going. Too much and the sensor will register water-lock or suds-lock and shut the spin cycle down. I also waited for the spinning to actually get going before beginning to add water.

Thanks so much for all the comments. I had contacted Miele before and they too suggested running the machine on Sanitize with no soap or clothes. So I did that and it helped. I had read that using vinegar was helpful and I was wondering if any of you have done that. I also have a de-scaler for Miele and I will try that. I am now using only 1 T of Miele powdered soap, as Miele suggested, instead of the 2 that I used before. I think it is getting better. Some things will take some time to whiten up enough I think. I have had this machine since 2001 and it has been fine until this problem.

I love the Miele but front loaders do have some disadvantages. You have fewer options like being able to stop the program and add or take out things, etc.

a1an

I have seen that color shift as well when running the cleaning cycle in that Miele. When I run citric acid through the tea kettle, the water remains perfectly clear. I assume the orangish color has somehow to do with dislodged dirt from around the washer drum.

I don't understand why someone would go against what Miele recommends. If they felt it was helpful to use cleaners or vinegar they would say so. IME it can take 2 sanitize cycles, totally empty, to clear the machine well.

Pure water doesn't remove lime scale, for once. A default Sanitize cycle also does very little to wash the outer tub. It's like filling one's bathtub with a few gallons of water and swishing it around - it'll only clean the lower half. If you go in YouTube and watch a FL do its self-clean cycle, you'll see that they all do deep fills and then spin the drum around to surge water in between the two drums.

muddlethru, have you checked if the machine is heating the water properly, and has anything else changed recently, like detergent, or water quality, or the wash temperature that you're using? After 16 years of good results I wouldn't expect that you'd suddenly need to clean the machine just because it's time.

WhirlPool - I was replying on me phone. Did not realize my draft got posted.

So are we saying that around the 1hr mark of a 2+ hr cycle, the color shift was due to the CA actually doing some cleaning and or is it possible, due to the extended time in heat, it would just react with heat/minerals in the water and just color shift. Just asking, to understand if the CA is actually doing anything major beneficial or not ?

I think it must do some cleaning. As I've said: boiling citric acid solution in any electric tea kettle never caused the water to change color.

Heh. I'll have to look for the color shift or not on the kettle. Aside from the LW/DW, CA in a water kettle is all I really use to clean things up . Then again, I don't look for color change on the kettle. I just boil, soak, drain and wipe out anything on the bottom plate, but generally, the soak is good enough to dissolve/emulsify the minor mineral buildup one gets in the water.