It's been a while, I think I drilled out the rivets or unscrewed it (I really don't remember). You could post some pictures and that might jog some memories.

Mark

Ya I'll do that tomorrow, I'll be off for the rest of the day. Thanks for all the good comments!

The plates are riveted on. You can use a drill bit to drill the core's out of the rivets and pop the plate off.

BTW: I filled in the holes with stainless steel bolts from a local h/w store since stainless rivets are a bit dear when you only need 4 of them.

Mark

Ok, I'll probably end up drilling the rivets out and do something that looks nice.

And it looks like all may not be lost for the hot water tap, looks like that rusted out ball joint can be re-built, the sphere being about $17 (wish they made one out of stainless steel or brass instead of something that rusts like that, oh well).

Make sure they are parts for the old valve assembly. Elektra changed them several years ago and the old parts are not available and the new parts will not fit the old valves. You may want to check with Stefano.

Update

I finally took the machine apart last week. Everything came apart easily, luckily nothing was stuck or a huge pain in the ass. The scale in the boiler was not too bad at all, but I'm still working on descaling it more, the heating element is in great shape with little scale buildup, clearly the previous owner (restaurant) took pretty good care of it.

My current step is disassembling the groups. The gaskets are baked on so I'll have to use some tricks to deal with those. Also, I'm not positive about how to get the bell off the group, I believe I only need to remove the three screws on top, I'll have to look up my schematic.

I will post pictures later.

After the groups are dealt with, I need to disassemble the pump.

Be sure you keep the end of the heating elements out of the descale solution. The bell(s) are attached by the 3 bolts as you mentioned.

All the best,
Mark

Thanks. Got the bell off of each group, just tapped them off with the rubber handle of a mallet. The groups are now disassembled and sitting in citric acid. They are not chrome plated so I think the finish should be fine. I'm planning on getting them chromed when I have the money for it; I was quoted $100 per group which sounds high.

I took a closer look at one of the parker 3 way valves and noticed that part of it is melted, looks like it developed a short in a pretty spectacular fashion, I wonder if this is why the restaurant got rid of the machine. Looks like I'll need a new valve.

Next step: separate the pump from the motor, I'm not sure on how to do this. I've loosened the brackets and it seems like they may be stuck by a thick coating of scale. And at some point today I'm going to clean the frame, after which I'll decide how to re-paint it. Perhaps this week I'll polish the stainless steel, luckily it's not in too bad of shape, no dents from what I can see.

Pictures as promised

--- I forgot, no photobucket allowed here, and I won't be able to upload until later so they'll have to wait!

Next pics will come later once everything is cleaned up.

I should note that I've discovered a great method of descaling. I have an old ice chest I just throw everything in with a good helping of citric acid. My kitchen faucet has a hose type nozzle so I just fill up the cooler with scalding hot water from there, it stays hot for hours. Then I just open the drain on the cooler to empty it. So easy!

I haven't posted on this in a long time but I have updates.

The machine is completely clean and de-scaled, frame re-painted, new gaskets installed. I'm waiting on a new pump to arrive and HX pipe for the right group. Next week I'll install those and hopefully get the wiring done to fire it up!

Provided I get her running, I'll get the groups re-chromed and polish the frame to a mirror finish. After all of that, I think this machine will become a test-bed for some mods...