by Marleetet on Tue Jan 29, 2008 9:31 pm I recently purchased a new PID equipped Alexia. Started out with a few teething pains: like not working. Internals were set catty whampus enough to push out the PID partially out, and wiring to the heating unit was disconnected, and internal copper tube to group head was pushed down on top of the "stuck down" reset button and a few other less than desirable problems. A few phone calls to the dealer yielded that it was ALL a shipping issue. Shipping: go figure, it is always the other guys fault. It took quite sometime to for me to fix these problems.
Finally when everything seemed right, I started to make my first cup of espresso. As I flipped up the pump handle, fine jets of very hot water came shooting out from around the portafilter. I had the PF handle set at the "6 o'clock' position. I stopped everything, pushed harder on the PF handle, until the machine started to move, and tried the process again. Same results. I tried a third time, but this time i used one hand on the PF handle and the other on the side of the machine for leverage and to stop the Alexia from moving. Same results. I tried a fourth time to the point that the pump turned on because the faceplate torqued so much that the pump handle touched the pump button. Success! No spray. Not a very worthwhile cup of espresso: but no 228c water shooting out either.
The service rep said that this was common. All of it. Even the fact that I will need to somehow torque the double PF at an angle to make two cups at a time.
I have tried to post 134kb .jpg and .jpeg of what it looks like, but, the download at HB comes back as "Unsupported data type". So to describe it, the Naked PF is at about the 4:30 to 5:00 position (straight out from the machine would be 6:00) and the Dbl/Sgl PF is at about the 4:00 position.
I tend to get too excited when I feel like I am getting my chain yanked by a business. So before I make another call: IS THIS REALLY NORMAL?
