Hello everyone,
Long time lurker here. I have been given an old Paquini single group machine by a client that does renovations. It has had a hard life and at some point was dropped or somethig fell on it. The frame is bent a little bit, a few of the stainless steel body panels are bent, and one of the cast aluminium panles is cracked and has a corner broken off. That said, I pulled the side, top and back panels off and it looks pretty clean. It powers on, I hear a few clicks and the water level light (at least I think that is what it is) turns on. The brew bottons all work when pushed. It is a La Cimbali M-27 under its skin. I am fairly mechanically inclined and would love to get this machine running and put it into the shop. Coffe and cycling go hand in hand.

I have a few questions to start with.

Does anyone have a manual for this machine that they can email? Both an operating and a repair manual would be great.

Does this have to be plumbed to pressurized water? Can the pump pull from a non pressurized tank?

Is there a way to manually fill the boiler? I would like to try to run it before I tear it apart to see what issues it might have.

Any help or advice is greatly appreciated.

Andrew

Can this machine be filled manually? I have tried to drop the incoming water line into a 5 gallon water bottle and that has had no effect. I even tried to gravity feed it by moving the bottle about 6 feet higher than the machine. I would love to check out what might work or not work before I tear it down and clean it up. Or can someone point me in a direction to get some help?
Thanks.
Andrew

No on the manual fill. Couple things. I would disconnect your heating element until you have the issues worked out. Energizing a heater without water in the boiler will burn out the element. There is a vibratory pump in that machine so when you power it on it should make quite a bit of noise, a loud BZZZZZZZZ as the piston in the pump runs. If it does not do that you could have several problems. The clicking when you power it on may be the fill solenoids opening which is a good thing. You can disconnect the power leads to the pump and put a meter on it. Turn the machine on (after you have disconnected and insulated the heating element wires) and see if you get voltage to the pump. If you do, you have a bad pump. If you do not, then it could be the water level sensor, the brain box, or bad wiring but I would guess your pump is bad if it is not buzzing away. If it is, you can try priming the water line. You can use something like a turkey baster to force water down the pickup line and into the pump to see if that gets it going.

For testing you can use John Guess or Watts fittings to supply water from a garden hose. I had a Cimbali Jr. that was dropped in shipping and no water supply at my work bench so that's what I did. If you decide to tear it down and fix it you are going to descale it anyway so the water quality is not a concern.

Thanks! I will check the pump out this weekend. Hopefully it is not the "brain" of the machine, as from what I have been able to find, those are not an easy fix. If it is a bad pump, should I replace it with a vibratory or go to a rotary? I have read a little that the rotary is a bit quieter.
Thanks again.
Andrew

Rotary is much quieter but you have to do a fair amount of work to convert it, and a replacement vibe pump is in the $50-60 range, a rotary will set you back a couple hundred for the motor and pump. It would also have to be out boarded, mounted in a cabinet under the machine.

not to mention the vibe pump gives you a gentler ramp; on a machine designed for a vibe, adding a rotary can lead to lousy preinfusion; There are things one can do to compensate for this, such as flow restrictors. If it were me, I'd just replace the pump with another vibe, if the old one is bad.