Cleaning up second hand Gaggia Classic

[talltom]

So I just bought a secondhand Gaggia Classic off eBay...

Good price but when I got home I realised it was completely filthy - not sure it had ever been cleaned properly.

I've descaled it, removed the shower plate and shower holder, done a backflush with Puly Caffe, removed the steam wand to clean it (the plastic cover had never been removed to clean underneath - yuck!).

It now produces clean looking water as opposed to the slightly brown stuff that came out at first.

One thing I'm not sure about: when you open the steam valve fully and run water through the steam pipe it also produces some water through the grouphead. Is that normal? I removed the steam valve itself and soaked it in puly caffe to see if that might shift any scale inside. It seems to work okay as a valve when it is out of the machine.

Thanks for your help.

[Glenn]

It's normal for some water to still come through the group if you haven't pressed the steam switch