Bathroom Sink Drain Stopper Not Working

hey guys what's up it's Scott with everyday home repairs and today I'm gonna show you how to maintain or fix your lift rod and the associated drain stopper very common for these to break but the nice thing is the fixes are simple sometimes just say simple tools needed and you can get back up running or just a quick trip down to an home improvement store or ordering apart on Amazon and you'll get back to normal or actually what I've seen do get it working normal for the first time so stay tuned okay so the first type of failure mode we'll go over is when you have your lift rod and it will move up and down and you will not see the stopper move now the stopper could be in the up position the stopper could also be in the down position and this one is can be very easy so if your lift rod literally like pulls out that should be just the tightening nut at the top of the lift rod strap all that needs to be is retightened and you'll get back in running order I'll show you example here of how to do that and then also it could be inside with the pivot rod where you might have the pin run might be broken so let's jump down below the sink and then also I have some parts available work and show you what that will look like okay so for this first failure mode what we're going to be looking at is the lift rod to what's called the lift rod strap and then the lift rod strap is what connects to the pivot rod by this pivot rod clip now when you have everything connected correctly you'll be able to move this up and down and then your drain stopper will operate accordingly these newer ones you'll see that's basically all plastic so for this these type of instances you know even really tools for some of these different failure modes but for this one the first one that that is actually the issue with this is between the lift rod and the strap this tightening nut is loose enough where you just have free flow and then eventually the lift rod just comes out so all you need to do is you can go down there check if it's not tight you see that free flow you just reset it in and then put your stopper in the up position so then you can put your rod down and then tighten it when you're down below then you'll be at the correct adjustment so when you tighten it your lift Rob will be down you'll be able to pull it up and then that will that will seal the stopper in the sink so let's jump on the sink and show you how to tighten that all right so now we're down here under the sink and you can see how the lift rods completely out of the strap so what you'll do and just lift that back up and pass that through and because we have the stopper in the up position I can go ahead and let this lift right come all the way down in in another scenario where you didn't have the stopper in the right position you might not have the correct travel once you start Oh after you tighten this all right so we'll just all we have to do is tighten this nut here you can do that with a crescent wrench or a normal wrench there's a few different sizes there's not kind of one size in terms of this bolt you don't have to get over overly tight but I would snug it up there alright so now you can see the whole assembly is connected give you a little better perspective there okay so if that's your failure mode super easy fix obviously no parts but let's jump into the next one okay so the second failure mode is if you see this lift run strap going up and down according to when you pull on the lift rod and then this right here seems to be working correctly but the stopper is not moving then you probably have an internal failure here on the other end of this pivot rod so what you'll do is we need to actually break into this and inspect closer on what could be the issue this one's metal you saw the other example was just plastic and it has a wing nut on it so in that case sometimes you don't even need a crescent and what I'd first do also is remove this pivot rod clip here I'll just squeeze that and then pull it off so then now we'll leave that free and you can set the clip to the side take this and then it in my scenario obviously this is not broke you will see both at this pivot ball to plastic and the plastic going into the bottom of the stopper or you'll see all the way metal metal for the rod and then just the plastic ball so take this out it should look like this and then always remember there is an actual seal in here so whenever you're reinstalling this make sure that that seal is in place it's very common for people to get ahead of themselves one side of that seal is flat the other one is concave that concave side the sloped side needs to be facing out because that is what's going to give you your seal onto that ball so before you install it make sure that seal is correctly installed and then let me jump up and show you one this is good for maintenance if you remove this you can kind of clean out any hair gunk that is in your stopper so we'll pull that and I'll show you which way the stopper needs to be oriented to get everything back in working order okay now with the pivot rod out that stopper should just be free to pull out other failure modes you'll see so if the pivot rod looks good in there but your failure is you cannot pull the stopper back down so everything looks tight from the lift rod to the lift rod strap the lift drop strap is correctly attached to the pivot rod the failure could be obviously internal like we went over but also at the bottom here you could have this plastic piece broken out with the some of those pivot rods just grab them right here so if we look at this new one this is a just a metal one and show you a closer look at that at that seal so that seal needs to be correctly in place so this ball can seat against there and then water will not come out of your drain if you do not have that in or you have an improperly installed super common point of leakage once you have everything back together so you might see if you actually have a failure you might see some corrosion here and this side of the pivot rod broken off you can pick up these pivots there's kind of Universal sizing so you can pick one up off of Amazon or your home improvement shop to give you an idea in the description I'll put some of these replacement parts that you might need over to Amazon so you can see and get an idea of what you might be able to order okay so back to the stopper so if we have everything back together and we need to place this stopper back in because your failure mode could be when you when you move up and down your lift rod you can push the stopper up but it never pulls down a common failure for that is the bottom of the stopper is positioned 90 degrees offset so what happens is the pivot rod is supposed to go through this side of the stopper and then move it up and down sometimes when people get in a hurry they install the pivot rod and then they have the stopper on the side so what that does is it will push it up but it will not pull it down right there's nothing to hook on to so you need to make sure that this loop and the stopper is facing the wall is facing the faucet and you go ahead and install that so that loop is directly open to the pivot rod coming through that can be a little tricky but just don't get in a hurry take your time and then once you have your pivot rod reinstalled make sure the drain is operating accordingly so I'm gonna do that right now so I jumped down there and show you guys how to get that installed and how to make sure everything's working correctly all right give you guys a closer look here what we were talking about so it's kind of hard to see but there's that loop so what you do not want it off to the side or we're gonna have that failure will only push it up but now pull it down so you want that loop opened up so the pivot rod can match up to it and then properly be installed it's kind of hard to see that but you can use your phone just like I'm using my phone to videotape this you can use your phone to make sure that's aligned and position your phone so you can see to make sure the loops correct all right so let's get that pivot rod back installed okay so again do not forget the seal and make sure that the sloped side is facing out that sloped side or concave side needs to go against this the ball in that ball you're going to have no matter if you have a plastic end like this or if you have a and so I'm gonna insert that in I'm gonna insert it through the loop tighten this nut and before I get too far I'm gonna hand tighten this and then I'm gonna go ahead and confirm that the drain is working correctly and it is okay so the drain is working correctly now that clip that we set off to the side we're going to reinstall so we can get this strap connected to the pivot rod so you just go through the one side of the clip then through the strap then through the back side apply pressure and then scoot it up one tip here so everything is connected now you can see the pivot rod at the top of the screen goes up the strap goes up we're sorry the lift rod at the top of the screen goes up strap goes up and pivot rod also so you can adjust this so the further you go out to the end the longer travel you're gonna have to pull up and down with the lift rod to make your stopper go up and down the further you go in the less travel you can't go too far in it you'll start getting it where it's actually not aligned but that will kind of limit your travel so if you don't like how much you need to pull that lift right up and down you can you can go ahead and move it in slightly and then that will reduce the travel all right so now we're back in business and I'm gonna take this guy up with the crescent wrench actually one more thing guys what well I'm down here so this little clip here if you saw with a little loose to get that clip so you can actually get some friction good to stay you you can actually bend it slightly so you need to bend it out so then when you reinstall it get everything lined up here strap on then need me to push it trying not to permanently deform it but now right because I I made so it was flared out then it puts more friction on that rod so then you'll be secure and you won't have it slide off later on and that's it so hopefully some of those different scenarios cover your issue and get you back up and running if you need a pivot rod or a new drain stopper abuse those are actually broke just go ahead and look in the description and I'll put a few links over to Amazon for the parts that you might need so if this video helped you out don't forget to give us a like and to subscribe to our channel we'll continue to put content out there and best of luck on your home repairs take care

Channel: Everyday Home Repairs

Views: 207,547

Rating: 4.9152241 out of 5

Keywords: drain stopper, fix drain stopper, drain lift rod won't work, sink drain stopper, bathroom sink drain stopper, bathroom sink drain fix

Id: lbCGWzy386I

Length: 13min 56sec (836 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 24 2019