pasadena_commut
Well-Known Member
In one of our bathrooms we have two American Standard "Willamsburg" faucets (2904222.002). These have ceramic cartridges. Since purchase in 2000 several cartridges have leaked and needed replacement, with the hot failing about twice as often as the cold. (Iffy statistics - small sample size.) Anyway, recently one of these cartridges rapidly went from a drip to a fast drip then to a stream. Replacement cartridges are in the mail from A.S. but in the meantime I removed the bad cartridge and stuck in one of the previous failed ones - better a slow drip than a steady stream. (Shut off under the sink doesn't work and I don't want to touch it since it and the pipe it is attached to are 70 years old.) These cartridges have a soft rubber ring around the bottom. On removing the failed one it left chunks of that rubber stuck to the brass in the "valve seat". (Not sure if that term applies for cartridges.) Scraped off most of it with a toothpick but a rubber film was still visible. What is a safe way to remove this stuck on rubber without damaging the flat brass area?
The ceramic valves in the previous failed cartridges never looked like they had any problem, no obvious nicks or cracks. Conversely, on looking at these cartridges now, they all seem to have the rubber ring on the bottom chewed up to varying extents. If that bottom ring leaks does water go around the bottom and up above the valve to leak out the faucet? Since water in our area is notorious for eating copper pipes I suppose it is also possible that it slowly chews up that sort of rubber. Makes me wonder if there might not be some thin type of washer which could be placed under one of these failed cartridges to seal it to the seat for longer than the built in washer. It would have to be quite thin though, since the threads for mounting the cartridge are only a couple of millimeters high. I tried a black rubber washer about 3mm thick (from an assortment of washers kit) and the cartridge threads could not screw in far enough to seal. Turning on the cold side sprayed water out the threads (the hot was of course off at the time.)
The ceramic valves in the previous failed cartridges never looked like they had any problem, no obvious nicks or cracks. Conversely, on looking at these cartridges now, they all seem to have the rubber ring on the bottom chewed up to varying extents. If that bottom ring leaks does water go around the bottom and up above the valve to leak out the faucet? Since water in our area is notorious for eating copper pipes I suppose it is also possible that it slowly chews up that sort of rubber. Makes me wonder if there might not be some thin type of washer which could be placed under one of these failed cartridges to seal it to the seat for longer than the built in washer. It would have to be quite thin though, since the threads for mounting the cartridge are only a couple of millimeters high. I tried a black rubber washer about 3mm thick (from an assortment of washers kit) and the cartridge threads could not screw in far enough to seal. Turning on the cold side sprayed water out the threads (the hot was of course off at the time.)