It was a warm sunny Saturday when I took the plunge...





Group Head has some scale.

Now I hope to remember how to put all this back together or I'll be sending Stefano a box full of parts.



Frame itself ready to be clean, there is some rust on the front right where the drain box is connected. Thank goodness for WD-40 or I couldn't have removed the leg that got some rust spots on the top under the drain box.


This is the bottom of the front stainless steel front along with the inside of the Gicar plastic box. Ugh, roaches like warm places. Glad they are all crispy and dead. The Gicar is not a sealed unit and critters can get in where the wires join the box.

Man, I bet you are getting glad that you are doing a real restoration. Looks like everything is pretty easily salvageable--just needs to be really thoroughly cleaned, and then treated well for the rest of its life.

Nice thing about espresso machines, they really are not that complicated. Just a water heater and some supply lines. Everything is made to fit, so if you cannot get that tube to fit on the fittings correctly, chances are you have the wrong tube or bent it when removing it. When I do a tear down, I take lots, and lots of digital photos just in case, particularly the electronics. A little masking tape and pen to mark on it works wonders as well.

Yuck, roaches. You may want to disinfect everything, a couple of times.

Paul Pratt's first step is pest control. Now I understand why.
http://www.espresso-restorations.com/Schedule.html

I took what I thought was a lot of pictures, now I think I should have taken more.

The big pipes are pretty much done. It's the little ones that still have some black scale along with the boiler.


The boiler has been in citric acid for about 12 hours now. It's barely starting to show copper on the heating element. The inside is about the same color as the heating element. Time to replace the water again. Every now and again I take some of the water out and bring it up to boiling in the microwave and put it back into the bucket to keep things warm.



I'm not sure how to clean out the group though. It's chrome plated and I don't think I should dunk the whole thing in citric acid. I could plug the hole and fill it a couple of times. Other ideas?



Any suggestions on the re-assembly? I'm thinking of using a little bit pipe dope during the re-assembly rather than teflon tape.

I descaled my chrome peacock's grouphead with citric acid solution. It didn't seem to have any effect on the chrome plating at all. I wouldn't worry about it. On the other hand, I am not sure how much citric acid will help that sort of a mess. You might need to take it apart a bit more and brush it out.

I would brush it and dunk it if it were me. Unless the plating is starting to chip off, but if that's the case you might want to spend the rather excessive money and have the head re-chromed... I think that ought to cost ~150, but it's probably cheaper than a new grouphead...

Just plug the thermosiphon lines with a cork and fill it with boiling descale solution and let it sit. After a few hours drain and refill. There is not much in there to remove. Once it has gone through a couple of descale cycles you could try to remove the group jet (that screw you see inside the group). But there is no reason to. The descale solution will get down in it and do its job.

FYI, if you ever want to change your group jet to play with preinfusion and water debit, Elektra (or anyone else for that matter) does not make a smaller jet. It does not take a standard E61 group jet. However, a Keihin carburetor jet for a Kawasaki motorcycle fits. I put a size 62 main jet on my machine, that is around 0.5mm, the factory was 0.9mm if I remember correctly.

I took everthing I could apart and then descaled it. Last night I corked the thermosiphon lines, and poured very hot water over the group head. I then poured very hot descale solution into the head a couple of time.



It looks real nice in there now.


Now is only the boiler and heater would finish up, they are getting close though. I hope there is no harm in letting the thing sit in solution for an extended time.

I guess I do know where all the pieces go.


=-=-
Mark

;^)

OK, what can I say . . . get 'em while they're hot -- uh, affordable! With the US dollar plummeting, and some vendors already selling their "new" inventory of Elektra Sixties (purchased with the "new and improved" [read: less powerful] dollar) for over $4,000, it was time to jump now or forever wish that I had . . .

So, I now own a brand new, "old" (purchased with the old, more powerful dollar) Elektra Sixties T1 from Chris' Coffee -- at a 23 percent savings over the brand new, "new" machines. Although I originally had thought I'd wait until we re-model the kitchen, that's at least a year or two away, and saving over $1,000 is a lot of $$$$, so . . .

Playtime this weekend!!! (Oh, wait -- $#!+ -- I have to go out of town to a wedding this weekend . . . )

Mark,

I noticed that the black base of the frame was really super-nasty looking around the drip tray drain in your earlier post. But in the most recent one with everything put back together but the boiler/heating element, it looks so good I could almost swear it was repainted. Did the crud just wash off, or did you have to do something special?