There's something in there...

Following up mine of 4 November...

Remember this?

The one on the left has something in it. What is that?

I thought it was metal threads from a cheap hose that was coming apart. So I took all my "put away" hoses out of the 55-gallon barrel. Re-rolled each hose using a hose-rollup fixture I made for rolling the hoses at the max diameter that fits in the barrel: to reduce the risk of kinked hoses, and to make the best use of the barrel-space, hopefully.

And I disconnected the hose ends and checked to see if there was a missing piece that looked like the piece that was stuck in my QC fitting. (I connect the hose ends together to keep dirt and bugs out. Again, hopefully. But I created some kinks by bending the hose to connect the ends. That's why I made the rollup fixture, and why next year I want to use hose caps and hose plugs to close off the ends instead. (Hose caps are easy to find; hose plugs, not so much.))

None of the hoses was missing that piece, the chrome piece inside the QC fitting in the photo.

I slept on it. But I awoke with no great insights, so I decided to do something else instead. I've been wanting to compare my brass QCs from True Value with the new ones I got at Harbor Freight. So, that.

By inspection, they are very similar.

By fit, they are very similar. The True Value male fits the Harbor Freight female, and the HF male fits the TruVal female, no problem. So I have one thing left to try: see if the brand mixing causes leaks.

I grabbed the Harbor Freight fitting and tried to screw it on to the faucet in the garage. No good: the QC fitting is too big.

What? Wait a minute... I tried the old True Value fitting, which fit before. Too big.

Then it hit me: The piece stuck in the fitting in the photo is the garage sink faucet adapter!

So that means it's not stuck because of corrosion. Hasn't been in there long enough. So that means, if I could grab it, I could get it out. It was kinda like inspiration.

I put a rag thru the hole in the chrome fitting, grabbed my triangular shaped file, stuck the file in there, and unscrewed the stuck fitting. EASY!... but only after two or three days of zero progress.

//

For a good part of the day then, I was looking for a replacement adapter to go from faucet threads to garden hose threads.

Next day, today, I had the chance to stop at Home D. So I decided that for five bucks I could risk guessing which adapter would fit my faucet. I guessed this one: Female 55/64"-27 x male 3/4" hose. It helped a lot that the review by AscendedMind said

This faucet adapter works perfect on my kitchen sink for connecting a standard garden hose to. Perfect for when the weather is freezing, but you still need access to a garden hose w/o worrying about your outside faucets or hoses freezing.

Because that's exactly what I want to do. Yeah, it's not freezing yet. But it will be.

Oh by the way, when I got the new fitting home I found a rubber washer in it. On the female side, just like hose washers in garden hose fittings. But this one is smaller: 55/64, whatever that is.^* The once-folded 3.25"x3.75" paper that serves as documentation for this adapter tells me "For manufacturer warranty information visit www.faucetaerator.com. I'm thinking that's my best first place to look for replacement washers or at least what size they have to be.

Yeah, no. Their home page offers three product categories: bathroom products, kitchen products, and garden & laundry products. None of them showed a fitting like the one I got from Home Depot.

Next: Their home page offers a Product Selection link. I clicked that and it offered a Housing Size link. Yeah, good, okay. The picture on that page shows that some of their fittings are about as big around as a quarter, and others as big as a nickel. Mine's the nickel. The text on that page is about something entirely unrelated:

Need to repair the entire faucet aerator or just the insert?
If your metal faucet aerator housing is in good condition, you can decide to replace the insert only. A damaged metal housing requires replacement of the entire unit.

Thanks.

Next step: Housing Gender.

Well, I am "unique and have a faucet with a male outlet (threads on the outside)", so I need a fitting with the threads inside. But I knew that before I went to Home D.

This site seems to be all about faucet aerators, not faucet adapters. And they don't identify their products by part number or even by the same description they give on the tiny page of documentation that comes with the adapter.

Well, I got tired of dickin around with this, so I went to see if the thing I bought fits my faucet.

Yep.

But I still don't know the size of the washer. I better find out.

It's just a hair bigger than a nickel, OD. I get 7/8" OD, 9/16 ID, 1/16" thick. Pretty soft rubber. Actually no: It does not seem to compress much when I pinch it, but it is pretty damn flexible because it's so small.

The same washer fits my old fitting, the chrome thing that got stuck in my QC fitting the other day. Good to know. But I don't think I'll be using the old fitting because it's only about 5/16" high. You can lose it down inside a garden hose fitting and spend three damn days trying to fish it out.

I''m not very comfortable with the new one, either, because it's only about half an inch high. A lot of garden hose females could easily swallow it whole. I'll want to remember to use two garden hose washers in whatever fitting I connect to this squat little adapter.

Anyway, the thing fits my faucet. I didn't waste the five bucks. And that's a good thing.

// Note
* :  55/64 turns out to be about the size of a nickel, a tad over 13/16. A quarter measures about 15/16" and fits easily in the female end of a hose fitting.