On Feb 17, 5:19 pm, mm wrote:
My mother was a flapper for a little while, but by the time I met her,
there was no way to tell.

So this is a tale of a toilet flapper. No question, just a tale.

OK, I have the old flapper out, not really old becaue I've only been
using it for four days, and it is like it is swollen a bit on one
side. It even makes the cone in the middle tip to one side. That's
why the water wouldn't stop going into the bowel. Have you ever seen
this. Do you think this happened because I have had these flappers for
2 years and the plastic wrapper distorted this one? Most flappers are
probably used with 6 months of being made, I would think.

Or was this just made wrong in the first place??

I have left the rest of the story, since I typed it, but the story
does't have much value since I found the problem with this flapper.

I have 3 identical Elger toilets and had little trouble getting
flappers when I first got the house. But then one wore out and the
universal one I got wouldn't stop the running, or the next one, so I
keep records and I dug out the box or card the flapper came in (or on)
and got the model number of my last flapper that fit, a SealMaster
flapper Part No. b-264V. Couldn't find it at stores so I searched the
web, and got just two hits, one of which was right here in Baltimore.
It was a semi?-wholesale store, and they were only charging 1.80 or
1.60 for a flapper, much less than anywhere else, so I bought two
cartons of them a few years ago. 24?

The first one or two worked fine, but last month, one let the toilet
run. I let it sit with water atop it, and after about 12 or 24 hours,
it worked fine after all. I guess the weight of the water shaped the
flapper to the opening.

This month, another toilet needed fixing, and this time the toilet ran
even faster with the replacement flapper, so much so I could see the
constant ripple in the toilet bowel and the valve opened to add more
water to the tank every 15 minutes. I ran my finger along the flapper
and the surface of the opening in the tank and found nothing that
wasn't flat. I used a toilet bowl brush to force the flapper down and
the water would stop running. I let it all sit for 4 days, and the
last day it got even faster, adding more water every 10 minutes.

So I just replaced the new flapper with another one, and it worked
right immediately.

I'm looking at the bad one now and I still can't...

The plastic wrap pack doesn't seem to be distorting the rubber, but
maybe it did in that case. After all, most flappers are sold within 3
to 6 months of being made, and used within a week of being sold. Is
that fair? This one was made years ago. OTOH, the wrapping has a
hole in the cardboard right where the platic hole of the tank would
be. So it holds it flat there.

Do you think I should take the plastic off all, or half, of my supply
of 20 flappers?

I've said this many times in the past before, especially with Eljer.
Get the original equipment flappers, not the universal aftermarket
ones made by Fluidmaster or other companies. If you go on Eljers
website and look up your toilet, you can order the flapper. I had
problems with my Eljer toilet and when I got the OEM flapper it fixed
the problem.