Broken Shower Stem

[Jetson]

I noticed the shower was dripping after turning on the water last weekend, so I checked to make sure both knobs were turned off. Suddenly one of the knobs popped loose and water started spraying out. After shutting off the water, I found that the outer threaded portion of the faucet stem had broken off, leaving most of the threads down inside the faucet. I had to drill a small hole in the collar so I could use a punch and a hammer to back the stuck portion of the collar out.

An hour drive to Camping World and I was sure I could get a new stem there so we could turn the water back on, but Camping World does not carry replacement stems for our Utopia brand faucets. They do not carry Utopia faucets at all. I tried buying a new faucet to replace the whole thing, but I could not get into the wall behind the shower to replace it, without destroying the glued on mirror on the opposite side of the wall.

I eventually made it to a Montana dealer. He did not carry the stems alone, but had a spare off a broken faucet. I would have been willing to buy a new faucet to pirate the parts from.

The main point of this is that you should get some spare faucet stems to carry along, the nylon could break at any time leaving you with no choice but to shut off the water supply.

[Thunderman]

Jetson,
Thanks for the heads up information, plastic stems could break at anytime. Definitely worth carrying a spare or two.

[NJ Hillbilly]

I am assuming You have the angle shower and not the garden tub, right?

That stinks but I'm glad it was relatively an easy fix.

John

[Montana_70]

The exact thing happened to me in my first Montana. Except for the drilling part. Mine just popped off and started spraying hot water. The threads were stripped, but I was lucky enough to have a local RV parts store that carried the Utopia facuet. It was easy to insatll and I did not have to do the run around that you did.

Thanks for posting this and putting it back into my memory bank. I think I will head over to the parts store and buy this faucet again before I pull out next week. At least I'll have a spare because I know it can happen.

[Just148]

It good that you were able to get the job done. I was wondering if you had an out door shower? Maybe the parts would fit. Worth looking into. Thanks for the post.

[sreigle]

Just in case anyone is in the habit of tightening the knobs to stop the dripping, give it a few minutes first. I used to tighten down on ours until it dawned on me it's just water running back down from the shower hose. It stops in a couple of minutes.

[Jetson]

I have an outdoor shower and I think the parts are the same. If I could have turned off the water supply to the outdoor shower I could have taken the part from it. I wasn't intending to use the shower anyway, I just wanted to stop the water from spraying out. I eventually screwed a cork into the hole. That slowed the leak down enough I could turn on the water for short periods, but eventually the cork started popping out.