My beloved Pasquini Livia 90 Auto has developed a new, mysterious problem, which seems to only occur when turning the machine on.

I turn it on, there's the normal second delay before I hear the click and the lights turn on. The pump turns on, presumably because the boiler needs to fill, but water just comes out the group head and the boiler never seems to fill.

The rare times when I can turn it on without encountering this problem, the machine runs fine and fills the boiler properly with no issues.

I've taken the machine apart and there does not seem to be any blockage, so I was thinking it might be a solenoid issue. The 3-way solenoid looks fine, the spring and gasket appear to be fine, while the spring and gasket of the 2-way appear more worn.

Does anyone have any experience with this or thoughts on what could be happening? Suggestions on parts to examine would also be very much appreciated. I'm paying it's not the CPU as I'd probably have to sell the machine for parts.

Cheers,
Michael

Hmm probably the two way valve isn't closing completely and is letting water/pressure through the HX lines is my guess. I had all sorts of weird problems in the past with differently machines in regards to auto fill. I surmise that's probably because the two way valve is hardly ever actuated. Could be your three way valve too that lets a bit of pressure through.

Though in all commercial machines I have had, all electrovales are "normally closed". Auto fill tends to be just line pressure, done by activating/opening the two way valve.

Though in all honestly I don't know the hydraulic layout of the Livia90 but I assume it's pretty standard.

Thanks for your comments.

I took much off the machine apart to clean in the hopes that would work: it did not.

So I randomly disconnected hoses and let the boiler fill process engage. By deduction, seems like the two way solenoid valve cool is dead.

Interesting fact I learned. The three way valve opens between the hx and head when the boiler fill process engages, but defaults to open between the head and outlet.

I ordered a new two way. Lets hope this works! Will post results next week.

Its taken me awhile to tackle this problem, but, alas, it still exists! I replaced the two-way solenoid valve which reduced the number of occurences of the issue by about half (so clearly needed), but I still occasionally get leaking at the head upon turning on the machine.

This only happens from a cold start and usually occurs when the boiler is not full. If it gets triggered by the boiler fill logic, once the boiler is full it stops. However, sometimes one or many of the lights on the control panel are lit and it only stops by restarting the machine?

Could this be the safety relay? I'm not really sure what that part does. I would guess its the CPU but I really don't want to pay for a new CPU. Any thoughts here on fixes or what I can test to attack this on a piece-meal basis?

Any help would be appreciated.