Too Much Coffee

Hi all, I have just finished a strip down and rebuild of a broken Bezzera Ellisse, she was in a bit of a mess inside, but nothing too serious, she has now had a total de-scale and a service so everything is almost like new! It was a tense moment when I fired her up for the first time, but she sprang to life and everything works well.

Like most machine she now requires some fine tuning as things are not perfect, I am getting some lovely shots, but have noticed that the anti-vac valve on the boliler is hissing, I am trying to establish if she is running at too high a pressure, I kept my old machine running at just over 1 bar pressure, the Bezzera is running at around 1.3bar, I have not changed this, so this is how she was set up previously. If I tap the top of the valve the hissing stops for a period of time, but then starts again. The element is cutting in and out fine, so no issues there, but I guess if the valve is letting off to early this will cause the pressure to drop and the element will kick in again, so running costs will be up.

any thoughts?

Congratulations on getting that good machine up and running again. Pictures?

The most common part I have replaced on espresso machines (aside from the group seal) is the vacuum breaker. They get scale in them and corrode. I have taken them apart and cleaned and polished the seat and/or replaced the Teflon platelet as a temporary fix, but they usually need replacing. The good thing is that they are not very expensive. I usually also replace the overpressure relief valve at the same time, just for safety's sake.

Congratulations on getting that good machine up and running again. Pictures?

Sorry for the delay, here are a few pics of the machine and issues found during the rebuild.....

Can't seem to add more that 3 pics to a post, strange......Continued from previous post...

Last Few.......

Impressive work Zimpker.