On Fri, 17 Aug 2007 22:12:30 -0400, Jeff Wisnia
wrote:

:If your assumption is correct and there is a piece of crud in the
:section between the cold valve on your new faucet and the place where
:the water enters the spout, Then....
:
:How about shutting off the main supply again, removing the cold stem
nce more, and forcing some compressed air or water into the end of the
:spout via whatever means you can? That should push anything in that path
:back out the valve stem opening, huh?
:
:Jeff

I removed the cold stem and the spout and blowing into the spout hole I
could readily tell that there was no kind of stoppage between that hold
the the cold stem... water passed quite freely. I was flumoxed. I soon
realized that the problem was caused by the washer not being held down
firmly by the reverse-thread screw. The screw had backed off, somehow. I
screwed it back in, not too tight... and reassembled everything and the
faucet was again working fine.

Next morning, the same syndrome occurred! First, the handle had to be
turned more than usual to initiate flow, then the flow started having
less than usual pressure. The pressure soon diminished with repeated
turnings of the handle until there was no flow! Of course, I realized
that the screw had backed off again. I've never experienced this before.
So, I reassembled, this time putting a pretty good amount of tightness
on the screw.

Looking at the screw's threads, I see a bluish compound on them,
probably some kind of loctite. If the problem persists, I'll contemplate
using some grade of loctite (or similar) to keep the screw from coming
loose!

Dan