words of wisdom...

Just thought I'd pass this life experience on to you all. Take it for what it's worth (if anything at all).
I live in an apartment. The maintenace people are a REAL PAIN to deal with (not to mention shoddy work, when they do "repair" something.) I've had a leaky sink faucet for about 10 years (since I've lived in the apartment). Every few months (it seems like every week!) I take the faucet apart and replace the "O" ring with a new one that i buy at the local home depot from a generic plumbing washer kit. Maybe it's because it's a generic kit, or just cheap o-rings, but they work great for a while, then they start to leak and drip again. This past weekend, I took a gamble... I saw that they had replacement "faucets" meaning the internal device itself. But there were a ton of them, all marked with special codes that didn't mean a thing to me. So, from doing the o-ring I knew roughly what it looked like. For $4.97, I took a gamble and bought the one that looked right. I usually get burned whenever I do this. But this time it WORKED! So I got a whole new faucet assembly (including o-rings and washers) and it works like a charm.
I'm not sure what the words of wisdom are exactly other than, sometimes it pays to take a gamble based on an educated guess.

Cyen

PS> I small plumbing disclaimer incase you want to attempt this on your own. There is actually a special tool to remove the actual "knob" of the faucet. It's quite complicated looking but basically it works like a corkscrew. Without this little $10 tool it would make removing the knob very difficult.