Like a lot of people I am out of work at the moment and when word gets out the calls start to come in, plenty of job offers. The most recent one was my daughter offering me a job remodeling her master bath. She buys the stuff and I do the work, well what are dad’s for if they can’t do stuff like that, right? And I get to see the new grandkid when I’m there and thats worth more than money any day.
The first glitch is the shower needs to be retiled and it needs to be done in a hurry because she hates to go to work smelling bad. What’s wrong with the shower in the other bath? I ask. The water temp doesn’t stay hot, was the reply, it gets hot then cold. Plenty of hot water but no temp control in the shower. Sounds like a balancing spool, I told her, sounding a little smarter than I really am.
A trip to the plumbing supply and $75 dollars later she is the proud owner of a new #1423 Moen pressure balancing spool. I had to use a screwdriver and a hammer to get the brass cover to unscrew, woke up the baby in the process, but its got to be done. So the brass cover comes off and…. where’s the rest of it? The inner part of the spool was fairly easily extricated but it appears the outer part is stuck. I mean really stuck. If I close my eyes I can picture a tool, some sort of a small puller with a feature that will grab the holes in the walls of the outer cylinder. If I had a machine shop I could make it, but somebody must sell a tool for this right? Is this the first Moen #1423 to ever deconstruct inside it’s brass home? Any ideas- and please don’t tell me I need to replace the entire shower valve!!
I need help- my reputation as a Mr. Fix It is flapping in the breeze right now.
Thanks,
RMB
Replies
sounds like you need a cleco. draw type to be exact. lemmee see if I can drum up a source.
Where are you?
wait, did you say the holes were threaded or no?
and how big a hole?
Edited 1/19/2009 7:52 pm ET by john7g
Edited 1/19/2009 7:54 pm ET by john7g
On some faucets (our Grohe Kitchen faucet) using the trim, or some other thing you take off and inverting it or somehow holding it in position, screw the trim/handle back on-drawing the cartridge out in the process.
Thinking the above might give you an idea for the extrication.
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There is an extractor tool for the regular Moens, but I don't know about a balancing unit.
However, for the regular units, if you can manage to turn the plastic body in the brass socket (and not just the inner parts inside the plastic body), that will generally break the grip the two have on each other and allow the cartridge to be pulled out with just pliers.
(Otherwise what you need is a bearing puller of some sort.)
I had the same thing happen to me once. I used a nipple extractor to turn the outer drum and then pulled it out. Don't know if you have an extractor but anything you can use to get it to turn to free it and then it should pull out.