any help would be greatly appreciated- the alternative is to discard the coffeemaker and buy something else.

thanks for your help
marianne

It turns out that the tank is totally under-engineered insofar as the working parts of it are concerned.

When the ‘coffee tank’ was last cleaned, the replaceable ‘seal’ decided to not stay on the ‘post’ (which has no ‘seal’ retention ability except for friction) tight enough to keep the pouring parts of the unit together and therefore the ‘spring’, which keeps the the ‘seal’ in contact with the bottom of the ‘coffee tank’ fell out the bottom. If the spring had fallen out during use, it could potentially have been swallowed by the coffee drinker.

The ‘post’ is obviously, to me, not of a good design and is the apparent ‘weak plastic component’. This ‘post’ component is unremoveable and also is unrepairable, even if one could figure out what to do with it. For the cost of the unit, one would think ‘stainless steel’ instead of plastic for the ‘post’ casting, especially since it isn’t replaceable, would serve the customer’s best interests.

Nothing can be done except to re-place the entire ‘coffee tank’ which is not available as a replaceable part.

We will probably not buy another Hamilton Beach ‘anything’.