For those of you out there waiting with bated breath, she's all done.
When I left you last, it was mostly mechanically bolted together and completely without wiring. It was a daunting project to undertake. Thankfully an experienced friend in Tacoma came to my rescue. It was an unexpected display of generosity as it took about 6 hours for me to completely wire it. All I had for documentation were the pictures that I had taken before disassembly and common sense. Luckily, the only complicated part on a machine like this is for the Gicar autofill circuit or "the thing that senses when the boiler needs more water and turns on the pump".
Adding to the electrical hurdles were:
- I replaced 95% of the wires. There is a group of them under the Autofill brain that are short and seemed in good shape. I changed all of the others.
- Changing from the Penn Pressurestat to the Sirai. In hindsight, it's hardly different but it did add a couple of decisions
- Rerouting wires. The old wires in my machine were draped across anything and everything hot or wet within reach. Most ranged from stiff to charred where there was contact. How could it ever have seemed like a good idea to allow the 3-way solenoid wires to rest on the group head? I moved most them to the rear of the machine and bundled them in the frame rails.
But we did it. Late that day, we connected it to a 220 line, put on helmets, grabbed a fire extinguisher and turned it on. It fired right up.
My trusted adviser told me that something will always leak on a rebuild. He was right and then some. I had at least 3 major leaks (1/4 cup per minute+) and 4-5 minor ones.
Some just weren't tight enough and a little twist solved the problem. You may ask why there is water all over the front of the machine. Well, I'll advise you to be very sure which direction "tight is" and to understand all of your water lines. I sprayed water all over the basement 3 separate times only slightly burning myself once while adjusting a couple poorly understood water connections with various pressures behind them. So I got in the habit of being more careful with unplugging and cooling. I only forgot to turn the water back on once, leaving the ProCon to spin dry for a couple minutes during another test run. Check out the new guy!
Others fittings were not so agreeable. I had reassembled all of them without any pipe sealant or teflon tape. This was not to remain true as there are fittings that seem to require it. Particularly, the two elbows into the Autofill solenoid needed 4+ wraps of Teflon tape each. If you look at the photo above, there is a yogurt container under there that would fill up every couple of minutes. Sharp eyes will notice the puddle at the back of the workbench. That was another leak that went unnoticed until it started dripping onto the floor.
Next time, i might do this part of it outside.
From the top.
8L boiler = lots of power. I am totally impressed with the muscle that 220v provides. This machine weighs 120lbs, has a giant grouphead and I think it heats up faster than a Silvia. If you can run 220 to your shrine, do it.
First shot. Patted myself on the back for at least two minutes. For the real technicians reading this, I had installed the 3-way solenoid backwards during reassembly. The machine would power up, heat up, the wands would work and I could hit the brew button and get the motor to run. BUT NOTHING CAME OUT of the group. Sharp eyed readers will recognize a spare group head on the bench in the above images. It helped me to understand the water path and solenoid states. I was despondent but figured it out before total depression set in.
Funny story here. I went looking for "cheap" whole beans to do the test runs on this thing. My artisan crafted, fair trade, shade grown organic, fancy guy beans are clearly too good for this job - right? So a quick walk to a West Seattle Safeway for some cheap stuff and what do I see? Nothing under $9/lb. Do people actually pay $9.50/lb for Safeway Select or $13.40/lb for Seattle's Best in a grocery store? I haven't tried either and maybe they are the best kept secrets in coffeeland but it was a shock to me. So it's back to the health food store for my $10/lb good stuff. A dollar well spent.
There it is. A couple more things to do. I've got a dryer plug on it because that's the outlet style nearby. I'll probably downsize that to use a standard size outlet for it. There's one more leak underneath but it's super tiny.
Anyway, I couldn't have done it without HB member support.
Huge thanks to those who helped.
by Paul on Thu Sep 13, 2007 4:29 pm 
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