The inside of the black group head looked like the inside of my Elektra 1 boiler. The black scale is really tough and I started with very hot water and plenty of citric acid. It took about a week, but as you can imagine, it's hard to heat up a 5 gallon bucket with a bunch of copper in it.

Your restore is looking very nice.

Mark

Ive been using citric acid anhydrous (granular) food grade. I ordered it off the net. Actually I was a bit worried about getting a white powder shipped to my place!!
I used a tablespoon per litre in a big pot with hot water & put it on the stove on low to keep it around 70-80 C for about 8 hours. Just kept topping up with hot tap water as it evaporated.

The rest of it was alot of elbow grease & a copper (or maybe brass) scrubber. My fingertips are almost non existent now!

Unfortunately the 2 boilers wont fit (even half way!) in my big stock pot, so Im not sure what to do there.....

How has everyone else dealt with this issue??

The steam boiler should be fairly easy as it is the old 5 bolt endcap one, so I can get my arm in there & scrub but the brew boiler is going to be a huge pain in the arse (or wrist!)

For the boilers try using a Coleman style cooler. That's what I used when descaling my Cimbali boiler. Put "close to" boiling water in it and close the top. Stays hot for a long while.

Ahh, is there anything an esky (cooler) cant do?

Rosscopico0 wrote:Ive been using citric acid anhydrous (granular) food grade. I ordered it off the net. Actually I was a bit worried about getting a white powder shipped to my place!!
I used a tablespoon per litre in a big pot with hot water & put it on the stove on low to keep it around 70-80 C for about 8 hours. Just kept topping up with hot tap water as it evaporated.

The rest of it was alot of elbow grease & a copper (or maybe brass) scrubber. My fingertips are almost non existent now!

Unfortunately the 2 boilers wont fit (even half way!) in my big stock pot, so Im not sure what to do there.....

How has everyone else dealt with this issue??

The steam boiler should be fairly easy as it is the old 5 bolt endcap one, so I can get my arm in there & scrub but the brew boiler is going to be a huge pain in the arse (or wrist!)

Using a variac you can use the properties of the variable transformer to lower the heat output of the heating element that fits into the boiler native to provide heating, and descale the element at the same time.

-C

Rosscopico0 wrote:Unfortunately the 2 boilers wont fit (even half way!) in my big stock pot, so Im not sure what to do there.....

Perhaps you could plug the holes with corks and fill it with the citric acid solution? Garbage can of descaler solution?

Mark

I soaked all my parts in a drum full of acid. You can read about what I did on the old Faema Rebuild Project

Barry Jarrett's method for descaling LM boilers is to tap around the exterior with a hammer. The stainless steel will flex and pop the scale off of it. Gets nearly all of the scale out and makes the subsequent chemical job easier

-Greg

Rosscopico0 wrote:Ive been using citric acid anhydrous (granular) food grade. I ordered it off the net. Actually I was a bit worried about getting a white powder shipped to my place!!
I used a tablespoon per litre in a big pot with hot water & put it on the stove on low to keep it around 70-80 C for about 8 hours. Just kept topping up with hot tap water as it evaporated.

The rest of it was alot of elbow grease & a copper (or maybe brass) scrubber. My fingertips are almost non existent now!

Unfortunately the 2 boilers wont fit (even half way!) in my big stock pot, so Im not sure what to do there.....

How has everyone else dealt with this issue??

The steam boiler should be fairly easy as it is the old 5 bolt endcap one, so I can get my arm in there & scrub but the brew boiler is going to be a huge pain in the arse (or wrist!)

I went with Gregs recommendation on the steam boiler (the brew boiler was in much better shape & did not need the hammer method) & was amazed at the amount of scale that fell off!!

On a different note, a pair of 2nd hand piero caps arrived today & are currently being cleaned.

We had a lot of crappy weather lately, so I was not able to do the final coats of paint on the low base, so now that we have good weather, that is now drying outside.

I have also decided that I will sell one of the machines probably in a stock configuration to help finance the mods on the other machine. This is primarily to stop my wife hassling me!

Can anyone tell me any advantages of the old brew boiler (welded stud type) compared to the old-old brew boiler (captive nut type) ??

I'm sure others with more knowledge than me will chip in, but the local agents here say that the first style with the nuts and bolts is better than the welded-on studs because you can get more torque out of them and you don't stand as much chance of snapping off a stud.