AndyS wrote:But seriously....

1. I've always thought that this is why LM sold the Starbucks Lineas with 2mm or larger gicleurs (or no gicleurs) -- maintenance is much simpler without them.
2. You should have bought the Speedster. Its gicleur takes five minutes to remove and clean, then you're up and running again.

I haven't studied the schematics of a Linea, but I think it is similar to the FB-80, which I did look at in the context of an email exchange with Dan. In any event, the water path of the GS/3 differs from the other LM machines, and the 0.6mm "ruby gicleur" is a part unique to the GS/3 (they make other 0.6mm gicleurs, however those are made of brass, and the plumbing path is not the same).

In all honesty, if the results in the cup were the only factor, I "should" have just saved my money and kept the Juniors, which tolerated just about any sort of abuse I threw their way, and were perfectly fine machines in their own rights.

Hopefully this is just a minor hiccup and I'll be back up and running with the GS/3 when I get back from my short, upcoming trip.

ken

Ken Fox wrote:In all honesty, if the results in the cup were the only factor, I "should" have just saved my money and kept the Juniors

Yes, but how much fun would that have been?

Ken Fox wrote:Hopefully this is just a minor hiccup and I'll be back up and running with the GS/3 when I get back from my short, upcoming trip.

Amen.

I wonder why they didn't put a simple inox filter around it (like in the Elektra T1/A3 group heads)? Perhaps there isn't room or it's an uncommon problem?

Mark

mhoy wrote:I wonder why they didn't put a simple inox filter around it (like in the Elektra T1/A3 group heads)? Perhaps there isn't room or it's an uncommon problem?

Mark

That would cut down on sales of replacement gaskets.

ken

Ken -

You could also try a "reverse flush" with either water or air using a spare modified portafilter and any basket.

Screw a 3/8" NPT barbed fitting onto the PF with a little teflon tape and disconnect the brew solenoid discharge to the drip tray. Use hardware store flex tubing at both "ends". Of course, this would only (possibly) cure the problem if the blockage was not gicleur related.

Of course Ken is correct that the solenoid coil and valve have to be removed to blow out the tubes with compressed air. That's what I did. I removed the solenoid and blew out the tubes from both the group head and disk end, and made sure to blow air into both holes in the disk at the solenoid end of TL30. I had a pretty good seal between the air compressor and the holes, but in retrospect I probably should have rigged up something more air tight to get the maximum possible air pressure.

But I think Ken's point is that once the valve is removed, the guitar string method can be used instead of compressed air. It's not clear to me which would be more effective. My own experience suggests that compressed air isn't adequate. The advantage of the guitar string is that it can give positive feedback on whether the hole is plugged or not -- either it slips in through F.2.003, or it stops short.

Unfortunately, if it stops short that may not mean the gicleur is clogged. It may mean the end of the guitar string isn't perfectly lined up with the hole in F.2.003. Guitar strings naturally want to coil up. I can see where the string might not want to go through the input tube straight, and it might be somewhat challenging to get the end of the string to slip into the .6mm hole in F.2.003. Luckily, the input tube is pretty short, so hopefully the string won't bend too much or Ken will be able to wiggle it enough to go through the hole.

Nonetheless, it's certainly worth trying before disassembling the group head.

Ken Fox wrote:I noticed that the flow rate was greatly diminished, and in fact continued to diminish to the point where the machine would barely produce a water flow of ~200ml/min, when normal flow would be roughly 350-450ml/minute.... The flow was so reduced that it was hard to flush off the group screen in between shots. Shot timing became just plain "weird," with the first drops of espresso starting to flow off the bottomless PF after 10-12 seconds instead of about 6 seconds previously, and the flow then seemed to speed up rapidly, much more rapidly than before once the first few drops appeared.

This behavior is consistent with consistent with clogged gicleur/very low water debit syndrome. The first drops longer than usual because it takes that much time for the slow flow to completely saturate the puck. Then the flow is faster than usual because slow preinfusion locks the fines in place before they migrate to the bottom of the basket. A "fast" pour rate is still slow enough for the required amount of water to pass the gicleur. (Typical preinfusion flow rate: 5ml/sec. Typical pour flow rate: 1ml/sec).

Ken Fox wrote:La Marzocco's prescribed remedy for this condition is to disassemble the group head, to unscrew the feed tube from both the group head and the solenoid ends, to dislodge the offending particle, and then to reassemble using new group head seals/gaskets in order to prevent leakage. I don't have the needed replacement gaskets/seals yet, so this sort of repair will have to wait.

When I had the GS/3 for a few months, I dissembled the group head and reassembled it without changing gaskets. This wasn't to clear a jam, it was just out of curiosity. I agree with ilya that in a new machine, gasket replacement might not be necessary. LM is obliged to give you conservative advice.

AndyS wrote:When I had the GS/3 for a few months, I dissembled the group head and reassembled it without changing gaskets. This wasn't to clear a jam, it was just out of curiosity. I agree with ilya that in a new machine, gasket replacement might not be necessary. LM is obliged to give you conservative advice.

This was my thinking as well, and Roger at LM hinted that this might be the case. Mine is, however, one of those machines that sat for more than a year after it was manufactured, before it was sold and first used. As a result, the gaskets may have been compressed for long enough that they won't behave like "new" gaskets and would need replacement.

In any event, I don't take things apart when I'm not reasonably sure that I have the parts lying around to enable me to put them back together when I'm finished . . . . .

Finally, unless one needs the money from the sale of an old machine, in order to buy a new one, or has no space to keep the old one, it's not a bad thing to decide to hold onto your old gear. This is especially true if your old gear is worth more to you than you can get on resale. I'm sure glad I held onto that Junior; without it I'd be close to throwing things by this point, whereas having another machine allows me to regard this period of GS/3 downtime as only a minor annoyance.

ken

Ken Fox wrote:Finally, unless one needs the money from the sale of an old machine, in order to buy a new one, or has no space to keep the old one, it's not a bad thing to decide to hold onto your old gear.

Excellent advice, but how do you justify keeping two old machines? Does NASA's redundant systems policy apply to espresso gear?

Ken Fox wrote:This was my thinking as well, and Roger at LM hinted that this might be the case. Mine is, however, one of those machines that sat for more than a year after it was manufactured, before it was sold and first used. As a result, the gaskets may have been compressed for long enough that they won't behave like "new" gaskets and would need replacement.

In any event, I don't take things apart when I'm not reasonably sure that I have the parts lying around to enable me to put them back together when I'm finished . . .

I guess I don't have your caution. Tonight, I pulled the grouphead apart and took out my jet, which has been an interesting experiment. I just wanted to mention, Ken, that my machine is about the same age as yours, and has been in operation for slightly longer as well. The procedure went swimmingly. In fact, that paper gasket appears to function more as a device to prevent the group from fusing to the cap by corrosion more than anything else: the rubber gasket in the cap is what appears to make the real seal. I rubbed a light coating of Dow Corning 111 on it before reinstalling it, and that's worked perfectly. All in all, the procedure is a bigger pain in the butt than replacement on the Elektra, Synesso (the easiest, really), or the Speedster--from what I've seen of Andy's pictures. But it's not as horrible as I'd feared.

And that's a good thing, because the flow without the jet is insanely high, even with the pump at 1100 rpm. I'll be getting a 1.2-1.5mm jet (most likely ordering a few new jets and drilling them out myself) soon enough. Also, it is sort of interesting that there's no filter on the LM jets... it would be pretty trivial to add that to the attachment that the jet is mounted in, and definitely would help the scale/debris related issues they seem to run into. Elektra's definitely taking home a win on this count.