In my new (new to me) home, I have noticed that the rubber "fingers" in the drain that block spoons, forks, small children, and other such items from falling into the garbage disposer are worn and are no longer blocking the drain effectively.

My initial research seems to suggest that the only way to replace the rubber "fingers" is to replace the entire disposer sink flange, which will entain breaking perfectly good seals and removing my garbage disposer so that I can install a new sink flange. This seems to be a lot of trouble and to risk damaging the perfectly good sink and disposer to fix a simple thing.

Am I missing another more straight-forward way of repairing the problem?

Thanks and take care . . .

Depending on the company that made the unit many of the reputable ones will send a FREE replacement.

If they don't forums are a great place to bad mouth companies that do NOT stand behind their products and put the word out.

If this is an Insinkerator or rebranded one from Emerson (Sears is most common, but there are other ones) then the splash back gasket is easy to replace.

You need to disconnect the flag on the discharge pipe. Then using the wrench or a philips screwdriver put it in the connecting ring on the sink flang and turn counter clockwise. Be prepare for the weight of the DG.

Then you can just pop of the gasket and replace it. Most home horror stores and hardware stores have replacements.

Look on the Insinkerator website. I think that they have instruction for installing the GD so that you can see how the flang connects to the GD.