Lockdown loo

How to sort out a loose toilet seat, if you have one of those concealed models. Ours was loose and wiggling about after > a year of usage.

My google skills are terrible, because a search for how to install one like this turned up no useful results. In fact it wasted a lot of time. So I'm sharing my experience repairing a soft-close model. The newer soft-close models are not covered in a lot of the tutorials in the same way the concealed bolts is glossed over too.

For the entire job, you will need a tape measure if you have bought a new toilet seat, something I almost did in desperation. You don't need a saw; many guides want you to just cut the bolts. You will need some penetrating oil and a flat head screwdriver. The cross-head driver was specific to the bolts on mine, your may vary.
Lastly, if doing a replacement, there is a nail, you will need a thin poking thing for getting the various plastic shims out.

1. Grab some soapy water in a spray bottle, and wipe down the working area well with disposable wipes. As seen in the right on top photo, use a sharp object to get the two plastic stoppers out. These will let you shift things back and forth now. It's a good time to add some penetrating oil into the areas we want to get into later.

2. Use the flat screwdriver to pop the chrome screw covers up. You will need to wiggle things around at this stage.

3. Now get to the screws and undo them a few turns to get more freedom. At this point give the throne a second good cleaning with the squirting bottle of soapy water. Using gloves is not necessary if you wash your hands well after, and the loss of agility gloves add is not worth it.

4. I dissembled and cleaned out the soft close mechanism at this point. It's rather fiddly to do, but if all you want to do is tighten the bolts, you can do so now, pop the plastic stoppers in again, and be done. NOTE! Do not over tighten the bolts, if you chip or crack the toilet, you will need to call out a professional. A straight-arm twist with no elbow action is enough.

New seat, if you are ordering a new seat, measure the distance between the bolt hole centres. also measure the pan depth (not height), we have a short pan for an smaller space, and seats that are shorter are not that common at all.

5. If you are still reading, you are where I went, installing the new bolts.

The nuts on the old bolts as installed by the plumber will fall off into the void. I ordered a set which come with an unusual rubber flange on the nut which actually stops the nut falling down. A plastic guide was also supplied, I binned that.

6. Gently push the new bolts into the holes.

Next up, we re-assemble, I'll share a few pictures that show the soft-close mechanism innards more clearly so that it might make it easier to take them apart (or put them together.) Remember, do NOT OVER TIGHTEN, or you may crack the porcelain.

Over here we can see the final assembly step. you want to rotate the bolting plate and covers in such a way that it becomes convenient to tighten them in the right final seat position. Depending on the distance between the pan and the cistern, that might be from behind, or, from the front.
Before tightening up, test the seat position (not by using, test by opening and closing it dummy) and check the alignment of the seat. Also go and stand a few feet back and check that it looks like it's aligned correctly over the toilet bowl.

Use a straight arm, and no "elbow grease" when tightening the bolts, and then use the flat head screwdriver to manoeuvre or force the screw covers back into place. Lastly, wash hands well, use a nailbrush as well, and rinse and apply hand cream. If you did the process correctly, buy are an amateur like me, it may have taken an hour and at least one tea break and multiple hand washes. Which means your hands will be quite dried out from all the soap action.

Viola!
I'm sharing this how-to mainly because Google was not showing me anyone taking you through these steps to repair a loose concealed bolt toilet seat. I personally abhor the hundreds of DIY sites that post facile descriptions of a DIY task that only works if you use the exact same materials and suppliers or even in the case of electrical how-to's, live in the same country. I have actually left nasty correction remarks about bad electrical how-to-instructions on some sites, in an attempt to warn of future visitors from creating a fire hazard or worse. The web is full of bad tutorial websites that pay non professionals to upload stock photos of DIY jobs they never did in order to generate advert revenue.

Anyway, that's enough of my "I hate the crap on the people waste time posting internet", my crapper is now fixed!