I just bought an American Standard Cadet 3 toilet. After bolting the
tank down to the bowl and tightening it as much as I feel comfortable
doing, the tank is very wobbly on top of the bowl. The rubber gasket
between the tank and bowl is pretty thick (1 inch) and spongy. The
instructions seem to indicate that the tank and bowl should actually
be touching porcelain to porcelain. Obviously I don't want to crack
anything by over-tightening, but I don't think there's any way the
tank should wobble like this. None of my other toilets do that.

Should I just keep carefully tightening until the tank and bowl barely
touch? Does anyone have any experience with this toilet or any other
advice?

Thanks,
Dave

On Feb 25, 11:39 am, headware wrote:

Should I just keep carefully tightening until the tank and bowl barely
touch? Does anyone have any experience with this toilet or any other
advice?


Same model toilet - same problem. I just kept tightening until it
felt solid. Figured it would either seat or break and either was
better than the tank wobbling around. Your mileage may vary. Tighten
both bolts evenly and wear safety glasses.

Good choice, though. I'm very happy with mine.

The Reverend Natural Light wrote:

On Feb 25, 11:39 am, headware wrote:

Should I just keep carefully tightening until the tank and bowl barely
touch? Does anyone have any experience with this toilet or any other
advice?



Same model toilet - same problem. I just kept tightening until it
felt solid. Figured it would either seat or break and either was
better than the tank wobbling around. Your mileage may vary. Tighten
both bolts evenly and wear safety glasses.

Good choice, though. I'm very happy with mine.


Tip: Get a helper to push down hard on the tank
while you tighten the bolts. Take your time.

Jim

On Feb 25, 10:39 am, headware wrote:
I just bought an American Standard Cadet 3 toilet. After bolting the
tank down to the bowl and tightening it as much as I feel comfortable
doing, the tank is very wobbly on top of the bowl. The rubber gasket
between the tank and bowl is pretty thick (1 inch) and spongy. The
instructions seem to indicate that the tank and bowl should actually
be touching porcelain to porcelain. Obviously I don't want to crack
anything by over-tightening, but I don't think there's any way the
tank should wobble like this. None of my other toilets do that.

Should I just keep carefully tightening until the tank and bowl barely
touch? Does anyone have any experience with this toilet or any other
advice?

Thanks,
Dave

Thanks for the advice. I used the tool provided with the tank to
tighten the screws. I alternated between them and tightened a little
(less than one full turn) each time while my wife pushed down on the
side that I was tightening. Worked pretty well until I got about 1/16"
of space between the tank and bowl. At that point became too hard to
turn the tool by hand. The tank was pretty firm on the bowl at the
point (though there is still a little play) so I decided not to use a
socket wrench to further tighten the tank down. I may go ahead and
finish it later. It will depend on whether my fear of cracking
something overrides my need to get rid of the wobble. It's anxiety vs.
neurosis at this point.

One thing that gave me problems was that the large center whole in the
tank (the one through which the water flows) is not a very perfect
circle. It's more of an ellipse. This caused the threaded plastic tube
that sticks out through that hole (the one on which the spud washer
sits) to be offset slightly to one side. This in turn caused the tank
not to align properly on the bowl which made it hard to bolt down one
side of the tank. I had to unscrew and reset that plastic tube a few
times to try to get it centered. People seem to like this toilet in
general, but I've noticed a number of problems like this. It seems
that the quality control department at American Standard just isn't
doing its job. Lots of people reported bowls that wouldn't sit level
on the floor. Mine was like that and I had to use lots of shims to get
it even close to stable. On the plus side, the toilet does use an
impressively small amount of water when flushing. We'll see how well
it uses it.

Thanks for the tips.

Dave