Hello,

I'm in a bit of a jam. Here's the story.

I came home from vacation earlier this week to find that my toilet was leaking from the bottom. The wax seal had gone. My wife and I have a 1 bed 1 bath in NYC so that's pretty much an "emergency problem" and one I don't even have a wrench big enough to attempt to fix myself. So we found a plumber with good yelp reviews and he came out and reset it. So far so good. But he also found that 1) the vacuum breaker was shot and 2) there was a tiny fracture in the tail pipe where water could escape when the valve is flushed.

I decided to have him go ahead and tackle these two since he had parts. He did not use Delany Rex OEM parts but what he had. He ended up having a lot of trouble getting the cowl nut back on when reassembling the whole thing. He thought the vacuum breaker might be too wide so he got one that's a few mm shorter on top. That got it started but then when he was tightening it, it tightened "too far" and would fall back down. He believed that my valve threading was stripped and that I'd need to replace it. The temp solution he had was to cover it with a few layers of teflon tape and get it "sort of sticking" for now. That worked for most of the week.

My wife just woke me up because the last flush sprayed 1.6 gallons of water all over our bathroom. I was able to take the cowl nut off with my hand and inspect things. Here's what I see:

- Nothing really looks stripped to me.
- If I try to screw it back on, it just doesn't seem to reach far enough. It feels like between the tail pipe shape and the vacuum breakers things "just aren't right".
- If I try hard (with my hand, I don't even have a big enough wrench) I can get it on, give it some turns but before it gets remotely tight, it turns over and falls back off.

I feel like what might be happening is that the cowl nut isn't allowed to go up far enough onto the threads. It's just not making it up there.

However, I was reading the Delany Rex service guide and it warns you not to over tighten the cowl nut (to use your hand or at most a quarter wrench turn).

[www.delanyproducts.com]

I know that the plumber who did this work went right at it with the wrench hard. So my questions:

- If you over-turn a nut like this do you generally ruin it? Is it stripped? It doesn't look stripped to me. The threads are quite deep and there's no visible damage. But I honestly don't know much about this stuff.
- Is there any way to tell if there are damaged parts to my valves threading? Any rule of thump quick tests?

My plan is to run to a supply store tomorrow and try to pick up a new OEM vacuum breaker, tail pipe and maybe even the cowl nut (it's $15ish but for piece of mind, I might just want to get one). That said, if from experience it sounds like my valve is actually shot and that over turning it ruins it, I might just start looking for someone to come out and replace the valve. So looking for any advice. Worst case I guess I'm out like $40 in parts if I try myself first which is not the end of the world. It's more about going into the weekend without a flushing toilet that scares me more.

Thanks so much for any help or advice you can give me.

Hey I have no idea about that stuff but for now I just wanted to remind you that you can always manually flush a toilet by just pouring a bucket of water directly into the bowl. Like fill up a container in your bathtub then pour it in and it should flush.

Just so you don't panic and feel like you need a hotel etc

[youtu.be]



Edited 1 times.

Yes, thanks for that advice! I have been doing that since last night.

Also for anyone else who reads, I think (though not sure) its important to always use cold water when you flush with a bucket or else you risk damaging your wax seal where the toilet drains. At least I read that somewhere else (maybe its a myth?).



Edited 1 times.

IF you use hot water to flush the toilet, you may not have to worry about melting the wax ring, because the toilet could shatter because of thermal shock. Flush valve vacuum breakeres are "generic" so I am not sure what kind of B.S. this plumber is giving you, but the V.B. should just attach to the flush valve without any problem, and I ALWAYS tighten them to the maximum.

Good news - things are in good shape now.

So one thing that is interesting is that the rubber sleeve for the vacuum breaker that was originally in there did look to have a much more narrow lip than the two that the plumber tried (and the one he left with me). But I wasn't sure that that was the problem so I bought two things: a completely new tailpiece kit (Sloan, but as mentioned above, these parts fit generic) and a pair of channel locks so I could actually work with the thing.

After taking it apart, I tried the individual pieces to make sure the threads weren't really warn out on anything. The cowl nut (it seems like cowl nut isn't actually a word anyone uses except for on the Delany Rex diagram) went onto the valve just fine when attache by itself. I put my finger under it and felt the gap between the bottom of the valve and the lip in the cowl nut that catches on the lip near the vents on the tailpiece. It felt smaller than the rubber lip on the vacuum breaker sleeve plus the thin metal lip on the tailpiece. Which would explain why the threads weren't catching - its just not getting high enough onto the valve to get screwed on right.

Now I did something that I wouldn't necessarily recommend (its only been working a day or so). I trimmed the vacuum breaker rubber sleeve lip so that I took off a few mm of excess rubber. Put it back in the tailpiece. Applied some upward pressure on the tailpiece while I tried to screw on the cowl nut. It caught and I was able to tighten it (I tightened it well, not hand tightened). Then second I tightened the slip nut going to the bowl entry (since the tailpiece needed to be movable when I got the cowl nut started). Everything has been flushing great.

One interesting thing is that I could not find a replacement for part 426 from Delany (that's the "cowl nut" that's used right now with my valve). I'm wondering if maybe this is just a really old piece that is slightly non-standard/too small and that's why it causes so many problems. The original rubber sleeve that was replaced definitely had a thinner lip and maybe that's because either years ago, someone trimmed it, or Delany sells/sold one that fits that specific setup for the Rex?

In any case, I don't need to replace my valve. Nothing is actually broken. It just took a patient 5-10 minutes of looking at the parts to see where the problem was and a pair of $15 channel locks to unscrew/screw them (I don't have many tools).

I still have the tailpiece kit as I am thinking next time something goes wrong, I just might want to replace it, nut and all, with a more standard/common part that doesn't have these issues. But its great to be out of toilet problems, at least for now. Hopefully this is helpful to anyone else who has problems with the same setup. I can't really say cutting up factory parts to make them fit sounds like the _right thing_ but it did work for me. If you think you have the same problem I recommend replacing the whole tailpiece, nut that joins it to the valve, rubber sleeve and all. Depending on the size it will only be between $12-30. If I had tube cutters last night I would have done it instead.

Well, I'm also out the money from the original replacement of the tailpiece and rubber sleeve that didn't work. And even something that ended up taking me 15 minutes at NYC prices is...a lot of cash