Okay, being a tinker, I just did the unthinkable and purchased an unheard-of machine on eBay: the Italian Express Piccolo Cappuccino. However, the machine is built like a tank, and it's honestly more impressively-constructed than many of its class (~$300 ca. 1990?). You can see the auction for now at http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200120365768.



It's lightly-used and last known working perfectly. However, I'm having trouble priming the pump.

It's got a pretty standard vibratory pump which draws water from a 24-oz reservoir into a boiler which looks like it would hold something around 250 mLs. The priming procedure is:

1. Power on (by implication, the boiler heating element)
2. Steam fully open
3. Brew on

At which point it should pump for a few seconds and start running water through the steam nozzle. The only problem is, it doesn't. The pump isn't drawing any water: just reciprocating. In fact, if I take the intake tube out of the reservoir and put it in a glass where I can observe it, the meniscus at its opening moves back and forth with the pump stroke a couple of millimeters.

One last symptom: even with the grouphead disassembled and the steam valve all the way open (or even with the valve core removed) I'm unable to blow air through either the intake or the boiler overflow tubes.

Any ideas what might be causing the pump to not be able to draw? I'm willing to dismantle it quite some ways to hunt for possible clogs, if only I knew where to look.

(Oh, and it has a pressurized portafilter, though it's luckily insanely easy to "depressurize": simply a matter of a set screw and a counterweighted valve.)

Dan, thanks for adding that picture. I should have all the photos from the takedown up later this evening or perhaps tomorrow... so until then...

There are some pump priming and other suggestions in this thread, The boiler doesn't fill up, first first time.

Check your lines first for clogs/kinks first.

If you suspect the pump, see Repairing a ULKA vibratory pump, in particular, this link, http://www.myschiffman.org/cg/rebuild.html for some disassembly help.

Hm, the pump might be scaled up. I followed this guide to rebuild an Ulka pump that was doing exactly the same thing. I just opened it up, washed a little crud off the parts and put it back together, and voila.
edit: Damn, Jeff beat me by just a few minutes.

Sorry, he actually beat you by 24hr+a few minutes. *grin*

And thanks, both of you, for pointing me to the pump-repair info. I spent this evening having some quality time with the pump (it's an Ulka H-series, similar inside to the E8-series in current production). And, yes, it was scaled up: actually, it was just the check valve at the top of the pump output. While it normally should have a cracking pressure of something like 15psi, the scale from having sat in a closet since Christmas 2004 with water in it held it enough that the pump couldn't crack it dry, and therefore couldn't even prime.

Now for the next hurdle: I'm pulling shots, and it's a nice machine. Unfortunately, the steam wand is completely scaled up somewhere as well. If I take the boiler apart, will I need to then hunt down a new gasket, or might it be possible without destroying the extant gasket. Keep in mind that the machine's condition is: used only four times, but stored three years ago without properly draining it.

The thing the Italian Express Piccolo Cappuccino is it was shipped with -- and possibly designed around -- a pressurized portafilter. I've not found much (read: "anything") about it online: it's called the "Boghe", and has a more complex design than many pressurized portafilters I've seen, since it has separate mechanisms for setting up preinfusion and "crema".

Anyhow, I of course demolished the thing and ground out the tiny spritzer hole in the bottom to about a quarter inch, and I get decent flow through it. The problem seems to be extraction pressure.

See, I took the whole thing (except the boiler/grouphead) down and descaled everything manually: the pump and OPV were both scaled shut, as was the steam wand. My question (or rather, answer?) centers around the OPV: is it possible this machine was tuned with an incredibly-high OPV setting to force extraction at 13+ bars for some reason tied to the portafilter? I've loosened it a half turn (it's adjustable by two turns, and factory setting was 1/4 turn from full tight), and didn't notice much difference. Granted, I've not measured the difference in amount of water shunted from the flow between the two settings yet...

The problem is I can pull a double with Turkish-fine powder tamped at nearly 45 pounds that by rights ought to stall the machine completely, and get an underextracted 15-second pour! With a grind in the normal range, I get around ten or twelve seconds before blonding, and an eighth of an inch of wispy crema.

So do I keep pulling back on the OPV until it stalls on powder, or what? Is my diagnosis of obscenely-high brew pressure even remotely correct?

Okay, so after loosening the OPV 3/4 of a turn, I'm getting golden rule pour rates, little bitterness, very little in the way of excessive brightness (so sue me, I was using Tom's aged Sumatran -- you'd better buy some before it's gone! -- not much acid to come out anyway), and thick, persistent crema.



I left the battery out of my camera, so this shot had been sitting for nearly a minute by the time I finally got the picture taken. It wasn't pretty (though the obscenely-light appearance of the crema in the photo is due to lighting) or as tasty as I'd have liked, but it told me I had the pressure right. And it's pretty difficult to ruin that Sumatran...

Unfortunately, I miscalculated how much coffee I'd use fixing this thing up, and am now running on three-week-old locally-roasted coffee until the stuff I roasted today has rested sufficiently, so no fun for a little while now.

Great thread...I just got one of these Piccolo by Italian Espress from my mother in-law, only mine is black with red handle and reservoir. She is a fairly accomplished cook, so it wasn't like a unwanted hand me down. We actually talk a lot about cooking. Anyway she hadn't used it for years (10ish)...we fired it up a few days ago and no water pumping.

I found this thread...not other evidence that this machine exists in the entire internet, it helped out a bunch (probably because "italian espress" is a vague company name)...have it torn apart now and cleaned out. One major part of the pump was scaled up pretty seriously, surprised it came loose even. Anyway, greased it all back up and luckily the rubber seals are ok. I will be turning it on today over lunch break to see if it works now.

Tell you what...that is a lot of little parts to keep track of, especially as this machine has very little room inside it to stick everything back in.

Will post later if it worked...well I guess if it didn't too, but with some questions. (post a pic or two as well.)

Again great thread!

Success!

I will post pictures and story after my camera is done uploading pictures to flickr.