I don't know when it happened but sometime since our last trip the water line to the toilet broke. Thankfully it broke after the shutoff valve. Sure, you could charge the toilet from a bucket of water, but it sure is nice to have it plumbed into the water system so you flip a switch and fill it.
The part that broke is a 12" long pipe that fills the toilet. It is threaded on one end, and the other end sits low in the toilet water chamber. The pipe is nothing special, just some gray plastic. Unsurprisingly they don't make it anymore. No one is selling parts for a 1977 Thetford Electra Magic Model 80 recirculating toilet. Go figure. I really did contact Thetford. They pointed me to a specialist who collects and stocks all things Thetford. Even that guy said he didn't have any and couldn't remember the last time he ever saw that toilet.
I think you could relatively easily recreate this part. Its just a pipe long pipe threaded on one end, open on the other, with a surround part way down that lets you mount it to the toilet. Not rocket science.
Still more work than I want to put into my toilet right now. I opted for a quicker fix. About half the threads had broken off, but half were still there. I just reconnected everything using the remaining threads. It sits deeper that before, but no enough to be a problem.
The toilet works again. If it breaks off again, there won't be enough threads left to fix it again so I will have to replace this part at that time. And believe it or not, I do really like this specific reciruclating toilet. My family of 5 has a rule that no one go #2 in the toilet. With that rule in place, and with some of those RV toilet tablets in the basin, this thing really does save water. We charge the toilet with water before we leave and can go an entire weekened without having to dump it to the waste tank. Recharging it doesn't take too much more water than a normal toilet would to flush once. Pictures
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