Pro Handyman Blog

Removing a broken shower cartridge is no picnic. Plenty of things can go wrong. You can use a cartridge removing tool which attaches to the threaded stem in the middle of the cartridge and gently goose the cartridge out of the opening. This works most of the time without incident. Then there are the times it doesn’t work and the stem pulls out of the cartridge.

For times like these, take a deep breath and relax. If you look at the cartridge removing tool, it looks like the letter “T”. The long leg of the tool is skinny and has a small ball bearing on the end of it. This ball bearing retracts enough so that you can slide the leg into the hole of the cartridge. When the leg exit’s the rear of the cartridge, the ball bearing pops out to grip the rear of the cartridge. Now you can use the tool to pull out the rest of the cartridge. This is not always easy. Maybe when the shower valve was originally installed, the installer failed to remove the cartridge before he applied the heat of the torch to the fittings. This intense heat can make removing the cartridge very difficult.