toilet
I'm trying to tighten a Pressalit toilet seat on a Villeroy & Boch toilet. Unfortunately on that toilet the bolts are inside the toilet base and tough to reach. The Pressalit website shows a special tool they use to tighten the bolt which I no longer have.
Any alternatives to that tool?
Here is a view of the tight spot:
I start by hand tightening as much as I can, then I tighten a little on each side and check if the toilet moves. If it does then I tighten a bit more, check and repeat until there's no movement. You're trying to avoid bowl movement, so that it doesn't shift or fall over, not to hold the floor up by the toilet bolts.
As tight as you can go will probably snap the porcelain (with a good socket you can torque a nut onto a bolt quite a bit). Until you think it's about to snap is just guessing.
Snug. No movement. Enjoy.
"Too tight" is a sixteenth of a turn past where the porcelain snaps :-)
There will indeed be some type of rubber, silicone or other type of flexible materal washer thing inside the nut. The cross section picture below attempts to show how the typical compression fitting of this type works.
As the nut tightens it compresses the "rubber" part against the end of the threaded plastic piece and around the outside of the incoming water line. Leaks can arise as from this "rubber" part getting hard and inflexible. The chorine added to water can accelerate this this problem. Over tightening the compression nut will also lead to problems. Sometimes a corrosive build up on the water tube can also lead to leak issues. Usually it is combination of all three elements and everything is OK till there is some flexure in the joint and then it starts to leak.
To fix it is suggested to replace the compression nut and the "rubber" part. If the inlet tubing is corroded then clean it up with steel wool. If the plastic threaded part is stripped from previous over tightening then you will also have to replace the fill valve assembly in the tank too. You should be able to find replacement parts at hardware or home stores. Replacement parts are usually fairly reasonable in cost.
Best Answer
So here is how I solved this issue.
I made a tool similar to the one shown in the hinge & tool diagram link above by wrapping a 1/2" socket with electrical tape, then securing a conduit bracket around the taped socket with more tape. This allowed me to use the portion of the conduit bracket that is screwed into the wall for leverage with my thumb to turn the nut.
Now the nut was still frozen so I used a product called PB Blaster liberally on it and after letting it sit for an hour the handmade tool above was able to break the nut loose.
Thanks everyone for your responses.