Review on Single Hand Mixing Valve Ceramic Cartridge by Bobby Frazier

It's great that Grohe has fitted their expensive faucets with a relatively inexpensive one-piece replacement part to fix leaks. My 10+ year old Ladylux Plus started leaking from the pen and googling the symptoms led me to this Revain cartridge. The replacement cartridge cost less than 10% of the original faucet and took about 90 minutes to replace. Most of the time you're trying to figure out how to remove the handle to get at the cartridge. If I had to do it again, it would probably take 10 minutes. Once you've removed the faucet handle, replacing it is relatively easy. It wasn't easy to remove the faucet handle from mine. There is a screw that needs to be removed, but the handle stays in place even after removal. I ended up removing it by hand using a hammer to hit the handle hard but gently (not sure if that helped much) and a screwdriver for leverage (it worked). I stuck the shank of a flathead screwdriver between the short shank of the handle and the cylindrical metal case and squeezed it until it finally came loose. As I was working on this, the whole old cartridge started falling apart inside. This alarmingly increasing loosening felt like I had broken the entire faucet, but when I took it apart I realized that the old cartridge was taking the brunt. I have attached a photo showing the Ladylux Plus handle connecting to the cartridge. The new cartridge is already installed. In my particular scenario, I had to reuse some external fittings around the original cartridge - a white collar around the cartridge plus a plastic fitting that connects to the metal bracket that the handle screws into. There is dirt on the metal knee where it attaches to the grip - mineral deposits or corrosion that has built up over time which I think makes it difficult to separate the grip from the knee. In the box with the new cartridge there were unnecessary parts that I did not need. Tips: Close the drain before unscrewing anything. You don't want to lose details down there. Take some clear photos of the old cartridge and connectors as you take them out so you can remember how the parts lined up. Give yourself enough time to work on it. If you're not mechanical, invite a friend to chat with you. All in all, I'm glad I was able to replace the cartridge and not the entire faucet. I wish I had a photo like the one I'm attaching to guide me - all the charts I found were helpful but not literal enough to give me any indication of how much effort I had to put in, to take the handle off.