Badger 1 disposal

[lynrose_00]

I have a Badger 1 which stopped working this morning. After reading the entries here I have tried the reset button (to no avail) and used an Allen wrench on the bottom of the unit. The Allen wrench does not turn easily. Should I continue turning the Allen wrench to see if it loosen's up. It just humms when I attempt to turn the unit on.

[albright]

first you should look inside the disposal to see if you can remove the dbris that is jamming it. if not just work the wrench back and forth to try and free the item.

[Phelps]

Get the inerds clean enough so you can see if your unit is rusted inside. Remove that rubber fingery looking thing if you can and look inside with a bright flashlight or penlight. I just relaced an older Whirlaway due to this, and have had to do this in the past. I now only buy ones that have the entire cutting guts made out of stainless, instead of galvanized. (Caution: Some say on the box that the cutters are stainless but the rest of it is galvanized!) They are easy to install and a 1/2 hp insulated (for quiet) GE costs about $69.

If rust is your problem and you get it freed up, you will constantly be having problems that will do nothing but get worse.

[LazyPup]

The rubber flapper is an intergral part of the mounting system and cannot be removed without pulling the entire disposal unit out.

Use a small flashlight and inspect the inside of the disposal carefully. When looking down into the unit you will see a round flat wheel with two slingers attached to the top. Those slingers are not the cutter, but rather they just spin the waste to the outer edge of the wheel by centrigal force where the waste is then drawn down between the outer edge of the wheel and the inside of the disposal body and is ground between the wheel and body.

Check the groove around the edge of the wheel carefully and you should see the the foreign object that is causing the problem. If not, you can remove the drain line from the side of the disposal and look in the drain port. You will be looking at the cutting edge of the grinder wheel. While looking in the drain port rotate the wheel with the wrench to see if the offending object will come around to the drain port where you pull it out through the drain port. Once you have the object out you can reattach the drain and you will be good to go.

[Phelps]

LazyPup,

On the GE I just installed the other day, the fingered rubber just lifts right out. It rests on a flange down a few inches. I think they have this feature for disposers that do not have the center allen wrench hole for unjamming the unit, so that you can see inside and work easier.

And I just recently replaced two bad units where the grinder wheels were rusted to the inside with holes starting to rust through inside. And the old units just hummed and werre seized from the rust that bridged the wheel to the sides.