What is a water inlet valve?

The inlet valve is a solenoid-operated tap the control board switches on to fill. Each port has a fine mesh screen to keep grit out, and in hard water areas those screens scale over until flow drops below what the fill timer expects, producing a slow fill or no fill fault that looks like a failed valve but is often just a blocked screen. Valves may have one, two or four coils depending on the machine, so count the solenoids on the old part before ordering.