I recently received a La Pavoni Europiccola lever machine from my parents who had the machine for several years. After getting it, they suggested I replace all the seals so I bought a kit and rebuilt the head and replaced the seal on the steam insert. Shortly after, the steam wand started to leak when the steam pressure is really built up. I don't have a pressure gauge. I've run some descaler through a couple times and run some pipe cleaner through. It got better but still leaks a little. Any ideas?

I should also mention that I removed the wand from the T-bar and heated the machine up to see where the leak was coming from. The water is seeping through the metal-to-metal contact of the insert and T-bar. I looked at a parts break down. Is there supposed to be an o-ring inside the T-bar for the insert to seat into?

If you bought a rebuild kit there will be a small o-ring that goes in there. The old ones go hard and, well, they leak. Pull it apart and have a look. If it's leaking you going to have to do it anyway.

Sorry to contradict on this one, but the hard rubber seal prevents a steam leak on the knob side of the valve. A drip through the wand side is from wear, contamination, roughness, or scoring (from over tightening) of the metal to metal interface.

I had one that developed the same problem. That is a metal on metal part. There is no O ring on the valve cone to opening. You have to replace it. You may have to replacereplace both parts but I would start with the valve stem.

I stopped mine by an aggressive cleaning of the valve seat (inside the T shaped body) with a strip of cloth wetted with descaling solution and coated with a little barkeepers friend, using a thin pointy skewer. I've seen others post that they've used valve lapping compound. It would be nice if you could actually lap it in, but since the stem is threaded it's impossible to get a good back and forth twist while the valve stem is seated hard against its seat. Also seems like using an abrasive on the stem would be a bad idea for the chrome ones. If you do something like that of course you need to carefully rinse everything afterward.

OMG! Barkeeper's friend is amazing! I used a bullet polisher for my dremel, sanded it down so it would fit inside, used an extension I made to get all the way in and WOW, crazy amounts of stuff came off. All better.