A friend of mine is trying to remove her toilet, due to some problem that she hasn’t specified to me. And, so far as I can tell, the reason is immaterial.
Anyway, she was having her father help her, and he’s a fairly handy guy. However, this has them both stymied.
In the floor, where the toilet bolts to the ground (and, for the record, it’s a tile floor with concrete underneath it), there is a headless bolt. It has an oval-shaped plate on it that’s about 1 1/2-inch thick. The plate has a tiny hole (or indentation - she can’t see it well enough to tell) on each side. The holes (or indentations) are bigger than the point of a pen, but that’s all she can tell.
She can’t tell if this is a bolt that she’s just never encountered before, of if it was rigged to be able to keep the toilet steady. She also doesn’t know how to go about removing it, ie, if there’s a special tool involved.
She and her father went to Home Depot to ask for help, but they were not given any assistance. I looked on www.doityourself.com, but didn’t see anything related to the subject at hand.
Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.
This may be my last post, so enjoy…
What you are describing is a kind of hardware specifically designed to keep amatures from messing around - next time you are in a commercial restroom, notice the screws used to mount the the stall dividers and doors - the mutilated head you will probably see is another, as are the Torx ™ headed screws found on some electronic equipment. Yes, these require a special wrench to remove properly, BUT: if you’re going to throw away toilet, you can remove it the old-fashined way - a sledge hammer and safety glassses, 20 minutes, and done. If you want to keep the fixture, a die grinder will grind off the heads pretty quickly, but you had better be careful about grinding into the porcelin. A Dremel ™-tyoe device will eventually do the same. If you want to unscrew them, you will need someone who can get tool steel, grind it down to size, and weld them together to jerry-rig a wrench (that is why the holes are offset - to allow a wrench to develop torque.
If nobody around knows what “tool steel” means, start pricing replacement toilets - machinists aren’t exactly cheap, and his/her knowledge and ability is the first job category that comes to mind to do such work. (no, you can’t replace the steel with wood, although plate could be bent and the end ground down to form the required fork to turn that head.
I’m not sure what a headless bolt with a plate looks like.
Generally, the “washer” that is used to hold down the toilet is an oval plate, but it is usually held in place by a standard hex nut. Of course, years of corrosion (especially if the bolt is very short and does not project up from the nut) may make the nut appear to be simply a blob on the end of the bolt and enough corrosion kight make the plate appear to be part of the same object. (“Cap” nuts are also used in this situation, so that they really look as though they are part of the bolt shaft once corrosion sets in.) In that case, the best solution is to simply cut off the head of the nut where it meets the plate and buy new parts.
For example (although a hacksaw also works).
See figure A and instruction #4 in this slow-loading instructions from DIY.
I offer the following only on the off chance that whoever installed the toilet was an idiot:
If you mean that instead of the traditional hex-sided nut, there is a thick oblong piece that is of one piece with the bolt shaft, then it sounds like a standard restraining bolt–inserted upside down. Usually the T-shaped part is placed below the flooring, usually in a hole that is wide enough to accept it in one direction but too narrow to let it through when rotated 90°. The T-head is inserted into the hole and turned so that it cannot come up, then the toilet is placed over the bolts and the normal oval plate and hex nut are used to screw the tolet down tight.
If the bolts were inserted upside down, your friend and her father will need to go downstairs and see if there is access to the hex head from the ceiling of the room below or else try to loosen the bolt by using a pipe wrench to turn the T-head.
(Don’t worry about destroying the bolts. most hardware stores have them as kits:
For example, Ace Hardware (this is the dealer page of 12-packs–you can buy just one).
The “T” bolts normally used to mount a toilet to its flange are a common hardware store item - look under plumbing, they will be close to the beeswax rings used to seal the fixture to the flange.
The only time I ever saw the kind of item you describe was in a sheet-metal fabrication factory (yes, I’ve had some strange jobs) - they were on nutplates intended to be spot-welded to sheet steel - if your description is accurate (how clean is the fastener?), you may have come across an old nutplate (essentially a nut welded onto a plate - if you stick a machine screw (‘bolt’) through sheet material and it screws into the sheet metal behind it, you are probably dealing with some variant of nutplate) being used as a nut for the “T” bolt, or somebody made up screws with a similar head design - I’ve seen some weird variations of fasteners, and it would not surprise if somebody had. Either way, the holes are the only source of torque, so deal with it. Unless you can get a vice-grip ™ varient that can grasp the sides and still be able to rotate that close to the porceline. Not likely.
Smash the toilet, grind off the head, or hire somebodu who can form hardened steel - you could try to arc-weld a square bit of stock to the center of the head, then use a wrench on the square stock, but the heat would probably fracture the porceline. You could try epoxying a hex nut to the head, but I doubt that would be strong enough to handle the required torque.
Whenever I’ve encountered the really rusty ones, clamp it with a short pair of vice grips and start to unthread it. If it is just spinning, attempt to insert wood wedges under that side of the bowl so you can get the end beneath the flange to catch.
If what tomndebb says regarding an inverted hardware installation is the case, I’d try the Dremel tool. Using reinforced cutoff wheels, they do a dandy job of cutting a notch into a blind head such that an ordinary screwdriver can be used. Be patient, and use eye protection.
I’ll grasp my vices however I care to, thanks. 