After a nice lunch out at Chick-fil-A, I set to the task of fixing our toilet. The tank refused to refill just before we left to head back to Illinois, so I shut off the water and let it sit while we were gone.
So I ventured out to Lowe’s and bought a toilet tank repair kit. I had fixed the flapper on a previous toilet, so I hedged my best that this would fix things. I began removing the old fittings and found that they were really distgusting, stained and corroded. I reached down and found that the rubber gaskets were all decayed and the screwheads had a lot of build-up on them, so I resolved to remove everything and change the gross gaskets and fittings.
I got the water line disconnected and then had to locate a wrench to remove the tank fill assembly. After some searching, I found a small wrench and it wasn’t big enough so off to Lowe’s I went. Again. After that, I made very good progress up to the point when I had to remove the tank to get at the flapper gasket. The screws were so corroded that they would spin in place instead of holding enough to let me unscrew the nuts, so I had the bright idea to use vice grips to hold the shaft of the screw steady so I could shift the nut. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find my vice grips so it was back to Lowe’s. I also picked up some WD-40 to help loosen the nuts.
Finally I was in business! After a LOT of work I got the tank off to find the gaskets were falling apart. I had to saw off the existing fill tube assembly because I had no other wrenches large enough to do the job, after this was done the installation was a relative breeze. After getting the tank back situated and screwed back down to the bowl, I am happy to report that my toilet is back in working order. I even adjusted the tank fill settings so I save a little bit of water with each flush!
More soon!
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