Doug Garrott told me his method, which I've shared online. Use "personal lubricant" or spit to penetrate to the seals. Heat it with a hair dryer. I use leather welder's gloves and grip the glass tight enough but not too tight. If it breaks, I'm protected. Move it back and forth until it budges, and then you'll be able to slide it free. I've loosened a few of these without a break.

Ha ha ha, those big ole knobs remind me of an Ellimatic I had for years. How much does the Beach weight?

drgary wrote:Doug Garrott told me his method, which I've shared online. Use "personal lubricant" or spit to penetrate to the seals. Heat it with a hair dryer. I use leather welder's gloves and grip the glass tight enough but not too tight. If it breaks, I'm protected. Move it back and forth until it budges, and then you'll be able to slide it free. I've loosened a few of these without a break.

Several attempts were futile. The main problem was the glass cage was only open on one side, so no way to pinch the tube between thumb and finger for moving. Just could not get a purchase.

It is moot now, as I was mocking up the plumbing and boiler the sight glass assembly slipped out of my hands and hit the deck. Only a two foot drop to a pad, but enough to deconstruct the thing. it broke the end caps free from the cross bar and also crunched one end of the glass tube. Hopefully it will still work, we'll see.

doubleOsoul wrote:Ha ha ha, those big ole knobs remind me of an Ellimatic I had for years. How much does the Beach weight?

From what I remember, it was about 30lbs. And measures an almost perfect 13" cube.

The Elli's were the precursor to the Beach and share a lot of the same bits. Hard to say where the Beach fits in their lineup, as it as an obscure machine of limited production. They were both intro'd in the 70's, hence the big knobs...

Slow going these days, mocked up the boiler and plumbing to try and make sense of the water flow paths.

It seems it was designed for plumbing in. All water flow is controlled by the two solenoids and the fill valve. There is a water level sensor in the boiler, with boiler filling either manually or auto. Now to try and sort out the electrics. There is only one tap on the brain box unpopulated, so need to find out what controls the relay that switches that tap on and it's the only thing left to control an outboard(or any) pump.

A little more progress on this thing. Not wanting to invest much beyond sweat equity, I just hit the frame with Vaporust and car wax. Mocked up the plumbing in the frame, making a cleaner install of the pstat.

A couple of oddities(heck, the whole thing is an oddity) cropped up. For one thing, someone had pinched closed the exhaust tube for the 3 way on the group. Will open it up before testing. My guess the 3 way started leaking at the exhaust and this was someone's idea of a fix.

And this appears to be on OPV. There is a hole, and a valve closed by a spring. It could be adjusted by screwing the nut with the hole, will see once it gets fired up.
Still have not found any indication of a pump having been plumbed in the water circuit. Next is sorting the electrics, as have seen no way for an outboard pump to be triggered.

It's alive! Alive I tell you!

Auto fill works as should. Switching and solenoids work as should, steam steams, unable to get it to pressurestat testing due to various leaks that cropped up.

All in all it's starting to look like a workable machine. The boiler and group circuits are completely separate, other than connection to main water line in. Both are controlled by the solenoids, with the boiler also having manual fill. Sill haven't figured out whether it ever had a pump. Once I get it sorted and figure out how to measure pressure at the group head, I'll run it up to 9 bar and see how the solenoids do.

Now to find a group dispersion plate. Hoping an Elli or Oscar will work. Seems to be a 58mm group.

After futzing with the thing I was wondering if it was just a bunch of kludged bits, then I ran into this in my wanderings -
Has the same boiler as the Elli, like mine. But has the rotary pump like shown in the only parts manual I could find, which is for the auto version.

This would seem to confirm the production of the semi-auto like my example. -

Have found no manuals for the semi-auto, or any other reference other than this promo shot.

Good progress so far David. Found out this thread after you mentioned it.

I +1 to the machine being designed with a rotary pump, whether it's a on-board or external pump.All espresso machines will have a mean to pressurize - either via lever or pump. Line pressure is too irregular to be the only pressure source. Though that is possibility if you want to set it up that way to brew at 2-5 bar.

I have at work a 3 group espresso machine with external pump. It has a lead going into the machine and I believe that goes to a Gicar since it is activated by pressing the pad button.

Do you have a wiring layout of your GIcar controller - for each connected wire? Maybe we can work from there.