My shower head developed a leak over the past week, so I bought two new replacement stems (Danco 12H-2/HC for Price Pfister). After replacing both the hot and cold water stems (and their seats), the leak slowed to a drip when all the valves are closed (about one drop every 5 minutes or so). However, when I open the cold water valve, water shoots out the stem in the middle. I thought this was due to a faulty stem so I went to the store to get a replacement. Unfortunately, the replacement behaved in the same way: when I opened the cold water valve, water shoots out the stem... Any ideas? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Here are some things I tried but didn't seem to work:

- Put Teflon tape on the seat threads
- Put a washer on the seat

Perhaps we are using different terms, What do you call a seat?
This problem has nothing to do with the seat.
It's the bonnet packing that it's blowing past the stem and cranking down on the bonnet packing nut will usually fix that. Or am I missing something here? Cheers, Tom