Taiwanese plumbing fixture repair

There has been a little chatter on the MTOA chatgroup, and no doubt here, about replacing the washers on the tub faucets with the Chinese characters on the casting. I have since seen the way the tub is plumbed and have determined that repair beats replacement any day!

One fellow on the MTOA site said that he'd found replacements for the entire removable portion of the valve at a large ACE Hardware.

First pic: why I'm gonna' fix rather than repair. That's metric copper tubing and metric flare fittings. Hull to the left, Melamine-faced plywood on the right at the back of the fixture, sit-tub lower right. Needless to say, I could not get my head there to see what I was taking the pic of. Well, maybe the pic has posted with top-to-right...

Second and third pics: the cold water valve stem.

I think Jay Leonard had some good info on those style washers a couple years back.

I made some for the first 2 years of my boat, then gave up when I copletely renewed my fresh water system and put a whole new shower fixture in.

Try shooting him a PM or wait and see if he shows up. There may have been one or two other successful souls that found replacements...don't remember any names though.

I've found the parts at larger old school hardware or plumbing supply stores.

But I'd cut open the wall in a way you could make a penel to cover it later and replace the valves/mixer. There are ways around the odd plumbing size.

Rainier Precision - Seattle Plastic Injection Molding

Call them. They stock the washers.


Pics of the set up with old washer

Jay, yup! Um's um.

I just did a tour of the Despot, Lowes, two old-style hardware shops with ACE affiliation, and an old-style plumbing supply here in Philly. Both the Despot and Lowes have the identical display and stock, and with the inevitable lacunae and misplaced items. Neither had the whole replacement valve stem and bonnet; both had the packaged items. There are two styles of the Aqua-Seal washers, #80410 and #80413, sold for American Standard faucets. Both have a large collar, both fit onto the boat's valve stem, but the -13 has a smaller diameter bearing surface. My PO apparently used the same washer but cut the collar off. The old style plumbing guy though that the splayed look, the depressed annulus, and the raised dimple were a result of being pressed into the closed position; he sold me two more similar washers.

Finally, pieces and boat in the same place. I trimmed the washers I found and assembled the faucet. All is well! Took all of 10 minutes.

The valve stems come right out of the bonnet. There's another O ring in there for which a trip to the hardware store would be required. I chose to ignore 'em pending reassembly. No leak so t'hell with 'em!