Fullsack wrote:Pulled the pump, the shaft was frozen solid. The seller must have run the machine dry, burned out the pump and decided to dump the machine-another eBay story.
....
Getting a heck of a noise from the electric motor, straining to turn a frozen pump probably didn't do it much good.

Stop! (actually it's not a huge deal)

I think it's more likely that the machine sat unused for months. From my own experience with this, that's what happened to my Elektra. Dave chimed in that he's needed to wrench his Elektra's pump shaft out of "lock" after storing it for months as well. Mine made an awful racket JUST like yours (I think) after un-seizing it, and I just flat out replaced it. Interestingly, I later had it professionally re-serviced by the people of Fluid-o-Tech. I talked to the guy (Shawn, he is awesome) that refurbished the pump, and he said it wasn't bad off at all, visually. I was surprised, given the noise from when it was running before. Anyway, FWIW you can phone F-O-T, ask for Shawn, and he will guide you through sending your pump in for refurbishing... assuming you have a F-O-T pump anyway. Cost is ~$30-40, much less than a new pump.

They also have the best deals (IIRC ~$100) on replacement pump heads. Sadly, no motors. Synesso has the best deals on motors (though you will have to outboard, as I don't think they are compatible with the Elektra mounts). Anyway, make sure you run the motor with the pump disconnected. If it's quiet, then you're golden. If it isn't, then you will need to replace or service that.

Also, as an aside to anyone who is thinking of storing their machine long-term: It's a very good idea to flush your machine with distilled water before putting it away. Shawn advised this pretty strongly as a way to prevent the pump from seizing, but it stands to reason that it's probably equally good for the other parts that can bind when idle, like solenoid cores and flowmeter fans, that kind of thing.

Fullsack wrote:The machine just started shooting water from the safety valve and the pressure gauge is reading over 2 bar. That might be a story for another thread and another day.

When the boiler pressurizes to line pressure, this means that the autofill has allowed the pump to fill the boiler entirely (and pressurize it). It's an indication of a failed auto-fill system. The least worrisome problem is if the wire is disconnected somehow from the level probe, or the level probe is scaled beyond the point of functioning right. However, it could also be a shot boiler fill solenoid that can't close (~$50, but you MIGHT be able to disassemble and repair it). If it's neither of those things, it's probably a shot brain box... OUCH.

Good luck, Doug.

Thanks Nicholas, lots of good information.

shadowfax wrote:Mine made an awful racket JUST like yours (I think) after un-seizing it, and I just flat out replaced it.

Mine made the racket with the new pump, so I assumed motor, but maybe it was just the new pump getting used to itself.

Brute force with a very big crescent wrench wasn't enough to free up the pump shaft, so I'll be sending it to Shawn. Thanks for the suggestion.

shadowfax wrote:When the boiler pressurizes to line pressure, this means that the autofill has allowed the pump to fill the boiler entirely (and pressurize it). It's an indication of a failed auto-fill system. The least worrisome problem is if the wire is disconnected somehow from the level probe, or the level probe is scaled beyond the point of functioning right.

I was thinking probe as well. In my excitement to run the machine with the new pump, I forgot to reinstall the level control light. I haven't traced the wire yet, but I bet that light is necessary to complete the circuit to the level probe.

Six days later and I still get a grinding noise when I run water through the group, more near the end of the run than the beginning. The blind basket really makes it howl. I've never heard a motor make a noise like that, but there are a lot of things I've never heard. I'd hate to get a new motor and find it wasn't the problem.

Sorry if I missed this, but did you say you've run the motor without the pump head attached? This is the easiest way to isolate it as the noise source. You could take the motor out of the machine, wire it to a wall plug assembly and check how it sounds if you want true isolation.

There are 2 other possible sources of awful noises in the Elektra I can think of. The first is the check valve at the 4 way junction. You can probably put your hand on it during operation and see if the pitch of the noise changes or you feel a heavy local vibration there. Check valves seem to engender weird water flows at certain flow levels, usually high ones, and that can lead to unpleasant resonance in your pipes. Given the problem is awful with the blind basket, where there's no flow after a short bit, that's not your problem.

The other one is the overpressure valve that should be at the end of a pipe coming off the lower part of the main HX tube where it exits the bottom of the boiler assembly, and attached to the drain junction. This thing can make truly, truly horrible noises if it's open wide, e.g. if you set the pump bypass to 11 bars and the OPV to 9 bars. You need to make sure that the OPV is set to ~11-12 bars and that the pump bypass is set to 9 bars. Also, lubricating the OPV sealing face with food safe grease isn't a bad idea.

Nicholas,
I'm guessing pump or motor because I wasn't hearing the noise before installing the new pump. I just finished reading your restoration thread Elektra T1 - # 759 built in 1999 is now mine Wow!!

I think, I'll do as Dave suggested in your thread and get the motor rebuilt. If it turns out to be an issue with the new pump, I'm sure Stefano will make good on it. Maybe it just needs to an adjustment to 11 bar. As I now know from your thread, the pump that came with the machine was not OEM.

Fullsack wrote:I think, I'll do as Dave suggested in your thread and get the motor rebuilt.

Good luck with that. I called some electric motor people here in Houston and got the impression that this would be extremely expensive, and given the pump's price (I was thinking ~$300-400 at the time), they said not worth even looking at. I expect the same to be true for you too, though you may get lucky and find a small-motor specialist.

Still, I think your strongest bet is to isolate the pump from the motor and both of those parts from the machine. If you can decouple the pump and turn the shaft by hand, and that motion is SMOOTH, it's unlikely that the pump is making the noise. If you haven't operated the motor with the pump decoupled, this is a really important key in not wasting your time on (possibly expensive) tangents. The EASY way to do this is to take the pump off the motor, take the motor out and set it on a stack of rags or something (for padding/dampening), plug it back into the power connector for the motor and turn the machine on [with the heating element DISCONNECTED!!]; it will try to auto-fill, activating the motor. The motor will spin, and if it's relatively quiet then you're wasting your time, if it's not you know what's up. If you haven't done this, I'd love to know how it sounds all alone.

Looks like your pump isn't OEM, but on the other hand it's hard to know--they might have just changed in the 6 years between yours and mine. On the other hand, given your machine's age, it may be more likely that it's been replaced before.

The pump shaft and motor shaft both turn smoothly and freely. The shaft in the motor has no lateral play and has the expected 1/16 of an inch in and out movement. The motor runs silently with no pump attached, but without resistance from the pump, it can't be ruled out as the culprit.

I cleaned out the hardened gunk from around the bearing of the old pump and pressed in some food grade lubricant. If I can get it turning, reinstall it, run the machine and get noise, then the load bearing motor is probably the problem.

The pressure setting of the pump bypass is very dependent on line pressure, so there's really no way for the factory to set it at 9 bars for you. Also, for a refurbished or new pump, it's likely they just put the thing back together and run water through it to test it. It may be set much higher than it needs to be, or lower. Rotary pumps go in a lot more than just espresso machines, so there's not really a standard pressure to set them at even if that setting were invariant with respect to inlet pressure.

It looks like you don't have a brew pressure gauge on that machine. On my 1999 Elektra there's a 4-way junction just to the rear of the boiler, where the water inlet splits off to the brew line, boiler fill line, and the pressure gauge. You may not have that last one given that all I see is the boiler pressure gauge in your pics. If you don't, your easiest option may be to build a portafilter pressure gauge. That said, I am a little confused by your post: how do you know what the OPV is set at if you don't have a brew pressure gauge? Also, the OPV needs to be set at 11 bars, and the pump at 9. The OPV acts as a safety valve to relieve pressure from thermal expansion as the cold water heats up to steam temperatures (though it stays liquid because of the pressure it's under). It should not open during brewing; the pump's bypass valve is what should be regulating brew pressure.

shadowfax wrote:if you set the pump bypass to 11 bars and the OPV to 9 bars. You need to make sure that the OPV is set to ~11-12 bars and that the pump bypass is set to 9 bars. Also, lubricating the OPV sealing face with food safe grease isn't a bad idea.

The motor operates without noise under load and the OPV is set to 9 bars. I mistakenly assumed the pump was factory set at 11-12 bars, but that may not be the case and is possibly the source of the problem.

shadowfax wrote:\On my 1999 Elektra there's a 4-way junction just to the rear of the boiler, where the water inlet splits off to the brew line, boiler fill line, and the pressure gauge. You may not have that last one given that all I see is the boiler pressure gauge in your pics. If you don't, your easiest option may be to build a portafilter pressure gauge. That said, I am a little confused by your post: how do you know what the OPV is set at if you don't have a brew pressure gauge? Also, the OPV needs to be set at 11 bars, and the pump at 9. The OPV acts as a safety valve to relieve pressure from thermal expansion as the cold water heats up to steam temperatures (though it stays liquid because of the pressure it's under). It should not open during brewing; the pump's bypass valve is what should be regulating brew pressure.

My junction is a 3-way, but I do have a pressure test gauge, I just didn't have the right sized adaptor to fit the gauge to the pump. I'll change the OPV setting and see if I can find a pump to test gauge fitting to set the pump pressure.