American Standard Spectra Versa Shower System with Rain Shower Head & Handheld Shower - 1.8 GPM Brushed Nickel Finish - Perfect for Modern Bathroom Renovations & Spa-Like Shower Experience

My diverter went out at around 9 months which seems to be about the average for anyone experiencing this problem who has installed this shower system. I contacted American Standard, they were very polite and ordered the new parts I needed under warranty, and after waiting about 2 months for the backordered parts to come in a new diverter valve finally showed up along with a new cap to replace the existing one incase it breaks while removing it to replace the diverter valve. Like everyone else on here I received no instructions on how to replace the diverter valve so I started at the button on the front and went from there. It's actually fairly simple to replace. 1. Pry the cap off of the front of the valve body with a small flat head screwdriver. 2. Behind the front cap you will see a Phillips head screw in the center of a second plastic cover, remove the screw and gently pry the cover off with the flat head screwdriver. There will be a large spring behind it, remove the cover and the spring. 3. Now you will be looking at the front of the diverter valve and it's being held in place by a threaded retaining ring with three holes in it. I was able to use a small pair of needle nose pliers between two of the holes and un-thread the retaining ring and remove it. 4. Once the ring had been removed I used the needle nose pliers to pull the old diverter valve strait out of the valve body. 5. I installed the new diverter valve in the opposite order and after I was finished everything worked as it had when I first installed it new. Just FYI the American standard part # for the diverter valve only is M970678-0070A.I was actually able to restore my old diverter valve back to normal working order fairly quickly and easily. I don't know if this is what is causing all of them to fail so often but this is why mine had stopped working. After removing the old diverter valve I could see why it had failed in the first place, it appears that some type of lubricant was used to lubricate the internal valve body and o-rings. Whatever was used possibly interacted with the chemicals in our city water and over time it turned into more of a jelly / sludge residue all over the valve, and with just a small amount of mineral build up and sludge sticking to the valve surfaces and o-rings it caused the o-rings on the inside of the valve to bind up against the valve wall until it finally stuck and couldn't move back again. The diverter valve is made up of three main pieces. The brass valve body, the brass inner valve piston with 3 o-rings, and a plastic actuator on the end that moves the piston back and forth inside the valve body. The brass valve body can be separated from the front plastic actuator by un-threading the plastic end from the brass end which will allow you to remove the brass inner valve piston with 3 o-rings on it. Be careful when doing this as there are 2 springs used inside the valve (1 on each end) along with other small parts that can get dropped and lost easily. Also make sure you pay close attention on how it comes apart so you can put it back together the same way. A little heavy duty dish soap, an old tooth brush, and a plastic pipe cleaner easily removed all the sludgy mineral buildup from the outside of the valve, inside the valve body, and the inner valve piston. I also removed the 3 o-rings from the piston to clean under them and put them back on. I used an o-ring lubricant on the inner valve piston and inside the valve body when I re-assembled the diverter and after I had put the entire thing back together it seems to work just like new again. I plan on hanging on to this to have as a backup incase the new one they sent me fails for some reason, I hope this doesn't keep being a recurring problem. Hopefully this will help anyone out who is experiencing the same problems that we all have had with this shower system. I personally really like it when its working properly but I think American Standard had done a terrible job in providing adequite support for a product that they sold that obviously has at least one major flaw. That's probably why there discontinuing it!