Installed New Bathroom Faucet; Pop-up Drain Stopper Too Low?

So a little background information before I begin--I'm primarily a techy guy, and not so much with home improvement or plumbing but our faucet's about six or seven years old and it's been leaky, and looks a bit...'rusted' so I decided to try my hand at replacing the thing.

I picked up a Glacier Bay Constructor Faucet from my local Home Depot: http://ift.tt/2aOd5q6 and followed the instructions to the teeth.

In terms of functionality, everything works wonderfully; there are no leaks anywhere, the water runs fine and I ensured every part was tight and well-placed.

So here comes the oddity: With the drain's lift-rod pressed all the way down, the drain stopper barely comes up. It's probably at best, 1/4 of an inch from its closed state. When turning on the water, whether hot or cold...the water drains incredibly slow, probably due to the rubber washer(?) under the stopper blocking the water from flowing through. If I manually pull the stopper a bit higher, the water drains normally.

I've done my fair share of Googling and watching Youtube videos, and the solution has all mentioned either raising or lowering the lift rod to a different hole on the lift rod strap...but whether I place the rod on the lowest hole or the highest, it actually makes very little, if any difference.

So finally, a friend of mine suggested that perhaps my stopper was too short, and that I should purchase a longer one--and so I did. I purchased a Delta Faucet RP5648 Stopper from Amazon: http://ift.tt/2b06JXQ

The verdict? No difference. At this point, I'm visibly stumped as to what the issue is. I've read online that a short lift rod might be the issue, but before I decide to purchase a longer variation--if such a thing exists, I wanted to chime in on here and see any experts might have a clue as to what is going on.

I'll be monitoring this post over the weekend--so if you need any more clarification, or if my post is too confusing, I'll try to explain a bit better.

Thanks for your help everyone!

Submitted August 13, 2016 at 06:05AM by ConfusionState http://ift.tt/2b07Wyi