How to tighten an old MOEN kitchen sink faucet, where the base flange is loose and wiggles around

 

loose MOEN kitchen faucet

This isn’t necessarily a very difficult problem to fix, but I thought it was a bit confusing with these old MOEN kitchen faucets.  This particular faucet is about 22 years old.  It has a U-shaped black plastic thing underneath, which at first I thought was missing some screws and thought the missing screws were the reason the thing was loose.  However, that is not the problem at all.  The real thing you need to tighten is the bronze nut that is directly in contact with the U-shaped metal part.  Likely it will be difficult to tighten this nut.  An adjusting wrench will likely be too big in size.  I found that with a lot of difficulty I was able to tighten this nut using the most basic box wrench, 1/6th of a rotation at a time!  It took me about 10 minutes to tighten this way but all is well now.  Apparently plumbers have special wrenches that are much easier to use for things like this, the wrenches that reach up with an extended vertical arm and in tight spaces.  I didn’t have one, most people don’t have them.

loose MOEN kitchen faucet U shape bottom

 

 

6 Comments on "How to tighten an old MOEN kitchen sink faucet, where the base flange is loose and wiggles around"


  1. Thanks so much for this article and pictures. I need to remove a faucet just like this and was baffled when I looked up and saw that odd configuration. Now I know how to proceed.


  2. For reals thank you again. My faucet is just like this but very very rusty. I couldn’t figure out were to remove it. Thanks again.


  3. I have a kitchen sink that looks just like this underneath and I want to replace it. Is the nut the only thing holding the “horseshoe” looking piece in place or are there extra bolts in those holes I’ll also need to access?


  4. I want to remove this old horseshoe shaped piece so I can remove the faucet….how do I do that?

    Thanks Billy

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