Toilets, Sinks, Showers, Tubs and Disposals - toilet problem

I have one of the old porcelain toilet with a day code stamped into the lid of the tank of 1947 (which is when the house was built) that will not stop running. It apears that the ball that moves up when the water is filling into the tank is not going up all the way and the tank is filling too much and water is going into the overflow tube. Now the inside cuts of the toilet are all copper which leads me to believe its the original guts. Question i have is, how had do i fix the constant running of the toilet, and if i need to change out the guts, what is the best way of doing it, my fear is cracking that tank and i have to replace the whole toilet. Thank you

You can replace all of the "guts" with a Fluidmaster kit that includes a new flush valve (the part that lifts to allow the water to flush the bowl) but that requires removing the tank.

If you mean the flush valve holds the water but the "float" valve is leaking you only need to replace the float valve assembly. Fluidmaster also makes a kit for this and I think it costs less than ten dollars. You don't need to remove the tank but you do need to remove the old float valve assembly. It is probably held in by a large, but thin, brass nut on the stem where the incoming water supply is located.

You will need to turn off the valve where the water connects to the toilet and it is normal for this valve to also leak.

If you could take a few pictures of the inside of the tank, where the water connects to the toilet and the valve at the wall I could probably offer more advice. To post pictures you need to first upload the pictures to a photo hosting site such as photobucket.com or villagephotos.com. and then post the public URLs for the pictures (or album) here. More pictures are always better than fewer. Please have CLEAR pictures and have both close up pictures and ones from a far enough distance that we can see how the various parts are interconnected.

The hollow ball is probably water logged, or the mechanism is jammed. If you can physically raise and lower the ball smoothly, and if the ball feels like it has heft to it, it is water logged.

Fluidmasters can be installed in minutes, with only one channellocks type tool and that's it.

After looking at it again, the ball was water locked, so i went to lowe's and got a new brass ballcock assembly and replaced it since it all looked old, and that fixed the problem.......Thank you of your information!