So, a bit of an update on the Rituale. It has been apart more times that I care to mention. I have found many little leaks & seeps and found yet more scale!
Today I have fitted:
A new over pressure valve as the old one was on occasion leaking back hot water into the tank, and also stuck shut a couple of times.
A new pump as the old one seemed to struggle for pressure & flow at times.
I also temporarily fitted a secondary pressure gauge (one within 1.6% accuracy) in place of the steam valve piping to check the boiler pressure. Oh wasn't that a revelation!! When the accurate guage reads 1 bar the original one on the machine reads 1.5 - 1.6 bar
So, when I had my pressurestat turning off at what I thought was 1.4 bar, it was in fact under 1 bar. No wonder the group temperature and HX recovery was low and slow
The pressure gauge has always been odd since I got the machine 8 years ago, the gauge has never gone to the rest needle when off. I remember when I first tried the machine that I was surprised how poor the steaming power was and I now suspect the gauge has always been a way off (though probably not quite this bad). I have set the p-stat to top out at 1.2 bar now and I now have the alarming sight of seeing the original gauge go up to 1.8 bar
Perhaps not surprisingly the group temperature now ties up with the boiler pressure and recovery time should be much better (not recorded that yet). I may have to re-adjust to the extra steming power though, so I fully expect some nice dishwater foam in my cappucino at breakfast tomorrow
The couple of shots I ran this eveing were very fine, the extraction and flow seem much more even with the new pump and OPV.
So, I still need to get the remnants of scale out of the HX piping just for completeness' sake. Plus I need to do the lever seals in the E61 group as they didn't get done with the rest of the group rebuild and there was water dripping out when I was setting the OPV pressure.
I also now of course need to get a new small gauge for the boiler pressure. I can't believe how much the "proper" one is bearing in mind how low quality they are. I might try and get a same size accurate one from a gauge seller and solder on the fine pipe from the old gauge. OK it won't say Isomac on it but who cares?