Category: repair

DIY: Toilet Fill Valve Seal Repair

updat­ed 8/7/2022

What: Kohler High­line Clas­sic K‑11499–0 (bought and installed May 2017) toi­let fill valve (Flu­id­mas­ter Uni­ver­sal 400A OE part — came with toi­let) issues

Prob­lem: Months of slow-fill­ing toi­let along with a loud squeal noise when float rais­es with water lev­el. It final­ly quit fill­ing alto­geth­er.

When: August 2022

Sup­plies: 242 Toi­let Replace­ment Seal, a cup

Cost: Around $4 and gas

Time: 10 min­utes

Dif­fi­cul­ty: Easy

Process

1. Turn off the water sup­ply (bath­room got a nice clean­ing after this)

2. Grab the fill valve cap and twist left to unseat it (you might have to grab the stem of the whole valve to pre­vent the entire valve from spin­ning. Here’s a video)

Grasp
Twist
It’s off!

3. Now to unhook the cap from the float. Give it a nice, care­ful tug, being aware that it is plas­tic.

Con­nect­ed
Not con­nect­ed

4. Exam­ine the fill valve seal for debris. Remove it care­ful­ly and inspect under­neath for debris. Clean it out. In my case, there was debris under­neath that was caus­ing a block­age and there­fore no water. It must have been there for a while and then final­ly occlud­ed the open­ing.

Seal on
Seal off

5. Sim­i­lar­ly, inspect the cap-less top of the fill valve for debris.

Looks clear to me! But just in case…

6. Now that every­thing is off, let’s go ahead and flush the fill valve itself. Appar­ent­ly, over the years pieces of Teflon tape, or min­er­als or oth­er debris can accu­mu­late in the valve. Flu­id­mas­ter sets the lifes­pan of a fill valve at around 7 years (mine is about 5 years old). SO, grab a cup and place it upside-down over the fill valve.

7. Turn on the water sup­ply and flush for about 10–15 sec­onds (accord­ing to Flu­id­mas­ter)

8. At this point, you would replace every­thing and test it out. It was no longer fill­ing slow­ly after the debris was removed, so BOOM, solved. BUT…the float mech­a­nism no longer worked…as in, the fill valve kept fill­ing with­out stop­ping. Oh, great. I bust­ed it some­how. Removed every­thing again and found that the orig­i­nal seal looked kind of chewed up around the float pin.

9. Turned the water sup­ply back off, and ran out to the store to grab a 242 Toi­let Fill Valve Seal (and oth­er stuff just in case, so I would­n’t have to run out again, but did­n’t need them in the end)

Spankin’ new
Instruc­tions aren’t super use­ful

10. Had remove it all again and here is an image of the old seal. If you look at the cen­ter, you can see how rough it looks where I tried to push it in with my fin­ger­nails and prob­a­bly from gen­er­al wear and tear

11. Here’s a side by side of the old seal and the new one

This side will face away from the cap
This side (with the nip­ple) will face the cap

12. Slide the seal onto the cap

New!
Shiny!

13. Now to reassem­ble it all. Line up the cap assem­bly with the float assem­bly stem groove and snap it in

*snap*

14. Place the now-attached cap back on the valve. Remem­ber that you have to turn right to replace it, so place the cap accord­ing­ly so that none of the parts inter­fere with each oth­er

*Let’s twist again! Like we did last sum­mer!*

15. Twist it to the right and, YAY, it’s back on!

Reassem­bled!

16. MOMENT OF TRUTH. Turn on the water sup­ply. You should imme­di­ate­ly hear the water fill­ing up. Now lift up on the float mech­a­nism. If the tank quits fill­ing, you are DONE, and it is REPAIRED! GREAT JOB!

Lift up on the float and BOOM! Hal­lelu­jah!

DIY: Worx 14″ Lawnmower Displaced Wheel Repair

06/26/2021

What: WORX 40V Pow­er Share 4.0AH 14″ Cord­less Lawn Mow­er

When: Bought Octo­ber 12, 2020 direct web­site, dis­place­ment found June 26, 2021

Issue: Front left wheel and height con­trol found dis­placed and there­fore unable to roll the wheel or adjust height. Minor piece of wheel found to be bro­ken ren­der­ing wheel wob­bly.

Attempt­ed Solu­tion: Found receipt, cre­at­ed online account, tried to reg­is­ter prod­uct, but reg­is­ter page loops. Attempt­ed chat with WORX, unable to estab­lish com­mu­ni­ca­tion for over 20 min­utes, so quit and decid­ed to solve it per­son­al­ly, espe­cial­ly after read­ing through WORX’s 5 year war­ran­ty terms, which would like­ly place prod­uct under “not cov­ered” cat­e­go­ry. More­over, any repairs would like­ly have extra charges incurred for ship­ping.

Solu­tion

Found Prob­lem: Front wheel axle unit dis­placed

Tools need­ed: Philip’s head screw­driv­er

I end­ed up tak­ing the front cov­er apart to get at the heart of the mat­ter. Though unnec­es­sary in the end, it did afford a glimpse at the very sim­ple nature of the prod­uct. There’s a bag of sand that weighs down the front of the mow­er. This one had been los­ing sand since deliv­ery arrival. It was thought per­haps it was mold­ing sand. Turns out the bag was ripped some­how. Throw some duct tape on that suc­ka.

The front wheel axle sits in mold­ed tracks, and some­how had got­ten out despite the retain­ing screws and wash­er in the back. It was a sim­ple case of push­ing the met­al rod back to the prop­er posi­tion (bend fac­ing for­ward) which also sets it into the clasp on the orange height adjuster han­dle. Then all the screws go back on and VOILA. Done.

I’m still dis­ap­point­ed in the flim­si­ness of the mow­er giv­en that I had just bought it in Octo­ber and used under 10 times. My last 14″ WORX cord­less mow­er last­ed me over 7 years with no major issue aside from the annoy­ing spring-loaded height adjuster. At least I know its design is over­ly sim­ple and any minor, non-elec­tri­cal repairs in the future will not be super daunt­ing.