I live in a very old house so these DIY projects are always a lot more involved than normal. Currently I am trying to replace my bathroom faucets as they are leaking. After a lot of research, I have decided to replace the stems, seats & spout as they are in rough shape.

I have managed to remove one of the stems (handle is stuck on the other one) & have had no luck finding a replacement or even any pictures online that looks like what I have. It seems to have a plastic seat with 4 "legs" that fit into the stem. See the 3 pictures in the following PhotoBucket album:

[s651.photobucket.com]

Any help on how to proceed would be greatly appreciated as I currently am without water (no separate shutoff for the shower, unless it is inside the wall).



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Any chance the "4 leg seat" was originally attached to the stem and has broken off? The tips of the legs look clean compared to the rest of the legs. I'm thinking the leg/seat is seated into the valve body with an o-ring and that connection seized, causing the break when the stem was unscrewed. I've been looking online and in catalogs and see nothing like it. The other "oddity" is the shape of the stem, where the handle attaches.

Thanks steve for getting back to me so soon!

FYI - I added an additional picture to my PhotoBucket album. It is a view of the stem from the bottom.

I don't think that the "legs" broke off as the ends seem pretty smooth. However after playing around with it some I found that to put the stem back on, the "legs" have to go inside the stem. Also they only fit if the ridges on the center column are oriented between the "legs".

The center column seems to be made of plastic & spins freely in order make contact with the weird seat. It will even unscrew completely from the stem if it would help to get an inside view of things.

You can ignore the other oddity of where the handle attaches. That handle broke off a while ago so we have been using pliers to turn the hot water on and off. I wanted to do more than replace the handle, so I was leaving it until I got some other home renovations completed but this just became top priority.

I have been trying to get the other handle free to see what the outside end of the stem looks like, however I cannot get the screw off the handle & now it is somewhat stripped. I did use a lot of liquid wrench to no avail. The screw was a bad choice as it is just a wide flat head but also really shallow so there wasn't much to work with.

As for the seat, I don't believe that it unscrews out of the pipe (it is plastic, plus from the picture it seems to not accept a wrench for removal - completely round in the center). Rather I think it was just wedged in there and I will have to yank it out. I'm would feel better if I had a replacement first before I go doing that though.

I was hoping to go buy a standard part but noticed that a lot of them say they only fit certain manufacturers. Does that mean that I will probably need to find the exact same part, or do I have a chance of finding something else that would fit?



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You will learn, in time, that stems are not inter-changeable with most manufacturers. Is the tub faucet exposed or hidden behind the wall. Depending on the age of the bath faucet, it might be prudent to go with a new one, with a temperature and scald control.

Best Wishes

I was afraid that was going to be the case. With this house there are usually nasty surprises that complicate things so I was hoping to put off a full facet replacement for now if possible. Anyhow it sounds like I will have to replace the whole thing.

Everything is behind the tub surround (built-in storage on the other side), with the pipes sticking out a bit. The current pipes are big & the pieces screw inside of it. Not sure about the spout yet as I haven't managed to free it up but it looks like it will be the same as the bit of exposed piping is large.

At this point I am hoping to figure out the manufacturer and with a lot of luck, find a suitable replacement part. However no one seems to have any idea of what the current stems are. I did read somewhere that you can count the splines on the stem & narrow down which manufacturer made it. This is proving difficult right now as the one stem has the splines wore completely off & the other has a stubborn handle.

Either way I need to get the handle off, so I will continue with that work and go from there.