Moen Moen EX75C GX Series Garbage Disposal

I recently purchased from Amazon and installed the 1/3 HP Moen Garbage Disposal. I had installed an Insinkerator garbage disposal in 1987 and used it every day. It worked fine until it became very noisy a few weeks ago and then totaly froze a few days ago. That made me think garbage disposals should last for about 30+ years. But reviews of recent Insinkerator models said they had used inferior metal in the chamber so it started rusting and then leaking in two to five years. Thus I decided against another Insinkerator. Other reviews said the Waste King models had a non-rusting chamber and that Moen had purchased Waste King a couple of years ago. Reviews of other brands all had a lot of one star reviews so I decided against them. There are not a lot of reviews of the Moen garbage disposals on Amazon so I read some reviews on the Home Depot web site. I was positively impressed because a few people had minor problems and Moen customer service replied to posts on Home Depot, either giving solutions to the problems or telling customers "call us at our 800 number and we will solve your problem". In addition one person had a Moen fail within warranty and when they called Moen the company immediately shipped a new one with no hassle and no need to "prove" the failure. That good customer service impressed me. I used an automobile jack to help remove the old garbage disposal and to lift the new one into place. That helped a lot. I left the 1987 Insinkerator mounting in place since the Moen instructions said the new Moen could mate to that. That saved me some time but led me to make one mistake. When I first jacked the Moen into place I looked in from the top and saw that there was no splash guard. Some of the parts had been inside the Moen body so I looked around for the splash guard and found it inside the Moen mounting hardware that I had not installed. Since the old Insinkerator had the splash guard mounted onto the body of the garbage disposal I made the incorrect assumption that the Moen splash guard needed to sit on top of the body. I lowered the body down, put the splash guard on top of the body and jacked it back to meet the mounting ring. But I could not get the mounting ring to close. After awhile I read the installation instructions again. It did not directly say anything about where the splash guard should be mounted. But the exploded parts diagram showed it inside the top of the mounting hardware and labelled it the "removable splash guard". So I finally realized that it didn't go on top of the body, but should be inside the top part of the mounting hardware. When I moved it to that location inside the top part of the old Insinkerator mount I was able to mount the Moen body to the retaining ring with no problem. If Moen had been more clear in the installation instructions about where the splash guard should be I might not have made this mistake. The one other problem I had was that one of the two screws that mount the exhaust pipe to the garbage disposal body was behind the exhaust pipe so I could not see the hole to get the screw started. I fiddled with it for awhile but then found that when I used a nut driver instead of a screwdriver, the nut driver held the screw better so it was easier to get started into the threads. One issue about the Moen units was that many people complained that the 1/2 HP and 1 HP units were very noisy. I looked at specs and saw that the speed of rotation of the blades is roughly proportional to the HP. So of course the higher the HP the faster the blades spin and the more noise the motor will make. So I decided to get the 1/3 HP unit since it would be quieter. We don't grind bones with the garbage disposal so I think the 1/3 HP will be fine for our garbage. I wouldn't call the 1/3 HP "quiet", but it is not too noisy given the job it has to do. I don't recall how noisy my old Insinkerator was but I think the Moen 1/3 HP is similar in noise. Some people complained that it was impossible to get their hand into the Waste King or Moen chamber to clear a problem. I am a medium size man and I can get my hand in after I have removed the removable splash guard. But a person with larger hands may not be able to do that. Also people complained that the Waste King and Moen do not have the ability to use an allen wrench to back off the garbagle disposal when it is stuck. My old Insinkerator had that option but I have not used it in a very long time, at least more than 25 years, so I decided that capability was not important to me. You can buy a special wrench to do this from above the garbage disposal for $9 on Amazon. As others have noted, the entry point for the electrical wiring is directly behind the exhaust pipe so it is not possible to connect a armoured steel cable such as I have feeding my electrical wiring. Therefore I installed an outlet on the all under the sink and plugged the new Moen wiring into that. Parts for that cost about $5. The time involved to install it was about the same as what it would have taken to remove the exiting wiring from the Moen and connect the wiring from the armoured cable if it was possible to do that.