Craigslist 2 group Rio - walkaround and firing up machine of unknown condition

[djmonkeyhater]

For less than the price of a full tank of gas in an F150, I brought this home. Craigslist at night is an exciting place.



At least there should be some parts to grab off of it although it looks nicer than I thought.

[djmonkeyhater]

It was about 5 miles from my house in a marginal neighborhood. I drove over wtih my finger crossed that there might be some parts useable for my Astoria. The seller was motivated and gave me the pump, 3 portafilters, some hoses and help getting it into my van. I now have 3 commercial machines in my basement and one works. Seems normal enough.



CMA is not shy about heading to the parts bin. All of these pieces would fit on just about any Astoria.



The dosing was the most interesting part of this deal for me initially. I figured if I could get a working motherboard, a flowmeter or two, and some controls out of the deal, I'd be way ahead on the investment. But there is a lot of good looking stainless here.



This panel is in great shape. The machine was in the seller's living room so I can only imagine the conversations around pricing it to move.



It was listed for sale as a CMA but there's a Rio badge on the back. The CMA website is lame and unless you know a bit about the company, it must have seemed like a real oddball. I could tell it was about 90% the same as my Astoria Lady after about 3 seconds looking at the grainy cell phone image.



1994 production.



Now I'm having trouble bringing myself to dismantling it. It's not in bad shape at least cosmetically. Maybe there is a person somewhere in the USA that needs a lot of Italian stainless.

[Paul]

great score!

someone will be along shortly I am sure to outline how the CMA family of brands fits together (astoria, wega, rio, numerous private brands etc). All use the same bits afaik.

[hbuchtel]

Nice! That looks the same as my Laurentis, which is also is a rebadged CMA. Astoria Argenta would also be a good name to search under when looking for info.

Good luck!

Henry

[john_K]

Nice score Wes!

john

[djmonkeyhater]

Is the fantasy of a good deal coming to an end? I started removing panels to find that someone had replaced the right solenoid body and neglected to re-install the exhaust. Once I scrape off all of the cooked on debris, I'll see if there is a corrosion issue.



This thing definitely has some miles on it. It's missing a right-side shower screen too I see. Another thing I couldn't see at night. AND that is one good looking sight glass.



There's some tasty corrosion on this side too. So far nothing really worrisome. CMA frames are notoriously prone to rust. Kinda like Alfa Romeo's.

That thing on the right side of this image is where the water comes in from the pump and can split to either group head when you are pumping out your godshots. The two downward pipes are for overpressure bleed-off maybe? Like a blow-off valve on a turbo car? Anyway, they dribble into the tray while in use and are on most of these bigger machines.

[Spresso_Bean]

Nice project you have there. Can't believe some of the deals people find, and it even had the portafilters which are worth a good amount on their own. Looking forward to seeing the progress.

[djmonkeyhater]

The sure sign of a life spent making Diet White Chocolate Raspberry Mochas could be the dozens of multi-colored straws I found lodged in the side panels. Maybe it was used at one of the bikini espresso locations. These panels are really solid too.



The seller told me that the machine had a "cracked pipe" near the "bottom of the glass tube". I took a good look with the flashlight and even scrubbed a bit. Nothing visible. She did tell me that it was "working" when they upgraded. So I'm operating under the assumption that it's at least 60% operational.

Those of you with sharp eyes will note that this is not a standard heat exchanger or HX machine. It's a thermal (thermical) pipe boiler. The hot water comes from a tube that is completely buried in water not one 1/2 exposed to steam like a standard HX. Those 4 pipes out the bottom of the boiler are the cold in and hot out to the groupheads.



Everything seems to be intact.

For those wondering, if anyone does...at the top of the image, the pipe on the far right is the manual overfill. It's done by a side lever using line pressure to "overfill" the boiler. Like if you had to make 1/2 dozen Americanos - more hot water, less steam. The longer one next to the left, takes incoming water and routes it through the autofill solenoid into the boiler. This circuit is controlled by the brain box. It activates the pump and opens the solenoid pathway when it senses low water. The curved one is the bottom of the sight glass. It's a simple water level indicator. Two loops connect the glass to the boiler. The left-most one goes up to the gauge and reads out the water pressure. It shows both the house pressure and an elevated level when the pump hits. That big nut on the bottom of the boiler is a drain.



A little dirty but not in overly worrisome condition. Once you tear into a couple of these, they aren't that complicated. Certainly less than they look, I think.

[djmonkeyhater]

There it is - the CMA cancer. It's not too bad on this machine but then again, I haven't taken the group heads off either. The two right-most bolts hold the groupheads to the boiler. The bolt on the left is one of the three that hold the boiler to the frame. It's how most of the machine is held together. Unfortunately, it means that the steel frame, with it's not-so-fantastic powder coating, is party to a never-ending cycle of heat and moisture. I will give them credit for using nice bolts. Stainless steel and heavy. Put away those SAE tools though.

The wired orange box you see is the three-way solenoid coil. The brass part above it is the valve body for the 3-way. Together, they allow back pressure from a brewing cycle to release out the bottom pipeso you don't get decorated with steaming grounds when you crack the portafilter right after brewing.

The brass pipe above is the hot water tap being re-located across the top of the left group. Either it was in order to make space on the left of the machine for the steam wand or it was because some consumer goods marketing genius like me decided that a critical point of differentiation between 80% identical Astoria and Rio machines would be a center mounted hot water tap. You'll see in the other pictures that it's about 2" off of the bottom tray/grate so unless you have midget cups, it's basically a handy way to rinse the portafilters and that's it. More importantly, and clearly an asset to the defunct Rio brand value is that it should reliably burn your knuckle when grabbing the left portafilter.



Enough minerals for a couple multi-vitamins.




Right and left steam wands. The white washer you can see above the ball socket is a Teflon washer. I don't think that they are stock but it means that someone worked on the machine somewhat recently. Both of these move around freely which is a good sign. The on/off knobs spin freely too. All exactly the same as my Astoria. Badge engineering is what we call it in the bike industry.



Here's what you see when you pull the grate and tray. The open port on the brass valve on the right is where the water supply connects to the machine. Since this machine has a remote pump, this connection will see the 130psi brewing pressure when the pump is running. Were the pump internal, you'd only be supplying line pressure into the machine. Also to note, the 40psi of line pressure can flow through the rotary pump when it's not running. I think that vibe pumps can NOT do this. The brass valve is the manual overfill I describe above.

The crappy, cheap looking black tub with the threaded port on it is the out flow. All spray and solids you manage to get in the tray along with some other seeping and dribbling sources will make it into that box and go where you route them.

That silver on/off valve shuts off water to the autofill circuit. I guess that you might use it to work on the machine as you could shut it off and run the boiler down with the water wand. Just don't cook the element. My Astoria has one and it's not cheap so someone must think highly of them although I think I could live without it. (I'm biased because the one on my Astoria took about 10 installs to get it to stop leaking.)

If you were wondering about the double-ended, brass, hexagonal thing to the left, I think it's an OPV. Inside is a spring loaded cone that would shut off the water supply to the groups if it exceeded a certain value. I don't know how calibrated those springs are and overall it doesn't seem terribly sophisticated so it's anyone's guess as to how accurate it might be. Maybe it prevents some sort of 300psi spike?



More surface cancer and some shrapnel from that unmuffled three-way on the right. Fossilized coffee grounds are not so bad to remove. And possibly safer to inhale than asbestos brake dust.

[djmonkeyhater]

What is under that cup warming tray?



This is the left side. Steam wand on the left, hot water wand on the right.

The little box with the two pipes and wires is a flowmeter. It has a little wheel that spins and tells the brain when the proper quantity of water has passed by. The only good reason for locating it here has to be some sort of "ease of repair". Otherwise, it's a questionable place for it. The cold water has to travel an additional 3' in brass pipes compared to locating them down low in the machine and it is located in the worst place for something sensitive and precise - above the groupheads. Your flowmeters can now look forward to a hot, sweaty life covered in coffee dust and steam. These are placed in the water supply before the grouphead, I would guess that it's easier to design them for cold water service than hot. They measure a quantity of cold water passing by, which displaces the hot water out of the thermal pipes and into your cup.



No plastic likes to be cooked, especially not the kind they use in CMA espresso machines where it's often hot.



This is the right side flowmeter. Whoever last worked on this one was sloppy.



Would it have killed them to actually complete the wiring job? You know, like tape it off or possibly use a connector? It's only electricity in a wet environment - how could that go badly?



Right side steam wand, grouphead and large quantity of important wires laid willy-nilly about on hot surfaces. We'll have to see how much of insulation on these cables is cooked stiff from the heat.



Boiler, barista's left side. Kinda dirty but not in a terminal way. The looping red wires below are the ones that take power from the pressure stat to the element. All 2600 watts of it. It's 14 gauge wire. I used 10 on my machine.

From the right, the first pipe is the left steam wand. The hexagonal brass deal to its left is what keeps the boiler from imploding when it cools. Implode might be a strong word but when boilers cool, they create negative pressure that will draw bad stuff into good places when the machine is restarted. This cures that.

Next one is the cold water feed to the left thermal pipe and comes from the flow meter. The fossilized wire is the ground for the autofill circuit. On its left is the hot water tap supply line. The only difference between a hot water wand supply and a steam wand supply is how deep the tap goes inside the boiler. (Water goes deeper.) Steam pressure is the mechanism for pushing both of these out. The farthest left pipe is the hot water heading into the group head.



Boiler, barista's right. There are chunks of bean stuck to the boiler. This machine has seen some crazy times.

On the far left is the brain box. If it works, I win. To buy one from EPNW will cost $869. Not kidding.

On top of the boiler, from the right you have....
- hot water to the left group
- brass round/hexagonal thing is the pressure relief valve to keep this from becoming a bomb
- small pipe takes the steam pressure to the gauge out front.
- hot water supply to the right group
- brass "T" fitting, the line out to the left feeds the right steam wand
- cold water supply to the right group
- the top one on the end is the manual overfill for the boiler
- the bottom one on the end is the return or top line for sight glass

The black box at the bottom of the image is the autofill solenoid. It's missing it's nut if you've done this before. Seems like it might be able to work this way. We'll see. If you follow the cable out of it to the brain, you'll see that they wrapped it around some of the other cables to "tidy up a bit". Funny.

[djmonkeyhater]

Still poking around when i get a minute....



There should be a nut on the end of the valve body to hold the solenoid coil on. This is a two-way soleniod, operated by the autofill circuit.



Here's the valve body. It's a cool little mechanism inside if you ever take one apart.



Here's the backside of the control panel - barista's right. That dirty black box with GIEMME written on it...if it's broken, I'll need $569 to get a new one. Let's hope it's not broken. To it's right is the back of the pressure gauge. There is a surprising quantity of wires in an automatic machine.



Here's the other side. That black bracket with the hole in it is a standard CMA steam/water valve mounting bracket. It's not used on this machine even with it's center water wand. Note to self - that stainless steel panel on the front of the machine is sharp enough to shave with in places.

Under the GIEMME control panel box there is the backside of a standard 2-pole switch, identical to that on my semi-auto. I imagine that it functions in the same way - turning on the pump and closing the 3-way solenoid on the bottom of the group and will run until you turn it off. What would be cool is if it will allow the machine to make coffee if the metered dosing function dies like it did on my FUTURMAT which does not.



mmmm... good looking stuff. This is a close-up of the group head. The chrome part on the bottom is called the bell and it is the "socket" that you lock the portafilter into. On these machines, it is brass and wears along with the portafilters. They're $96 each to replace so it would be cooler if they did NOT wear because portafilters are only $50. And of course, lots of wires laying on hot surfaces.



A close-up of the group head from the top. The giant hexagonal bolt to the right is a plug. On a thermosyphon or standard HX machine from CMA, this is where the cold water supply would enter the system to be heated for coffee-making. Since this is thermal pipe machine, it's more to the right. The other giant bolt covers two things - a small filter to keep particulates out of some of the smaller orifices in the machine and the Gigleur (sp?). It's basically a jet that controls the flow rate of the water flowing into your espresso making efforts. I've heard some people mess with them to get different ramp ups in the brew cycle. I just clean them.

[djmonkeyhater]

Here's a look at the high voltage end.



Wow. So the heating element wires are random lengths and a relatively modest gauge of wire. The power switch "water-resisting" cover is not attached and there's a wire nut under it. The boiler cap appears to have been involved in a fire previously and there's a black module attached to the cap with no wires connected to it.

There is, however, a brand new Sirai pressurestat. It is the black box that the red wires run to on the top left. Score one point for me.



This actually doesn't appear to have been messed with since it left the factory. These junction blocks are not bad, I just think that they don't take a heavy enough gauge wire or let you run two smaller wires in very easily.



Not sure what's going on here. I'd be more nervous about plugging it in except that the woman I purchased it from seemed sincere that it ran and only had a small cracked pipe when it was retired. I find that I worry more if someone tells me they were working on it or they have no idea if it works or not.

That giant bolt is another CMA standard part and it holds the side panels on. It's strange that there are three tiny 2mm diameter screws holding the top of the panels and one massive 12mm diameter bolt holding the side.

I'm still going to do some multimeter work before I plug it in.

[Richard]

I'm still going to do some multimeter work before I plug it in.

Have you considered moving it out into the back yard with sandbags around it, too?

[djmonkeyhater]

I love thinking about this when I stop at some shady espresso stand. Maybe it's what you get sprinkled on top of a gingerbread mint latte.



Take a gander at the second most expensive part on the machine after the boiler - the black box. If this unit is dead, it's a parts machine unless I muster the interest to make it semi-auto. All I'd need is an autofill box, a couple switches, lots of wire and an afternoon to puzzle through it.



A little bit more cancer but it seems superficial.



The autofill solenoid wire was looped around this mass of wires as a keeper of sorts. It would appear that the ribbon cable comes in one length and is used in a one-size-fits-all manner. This thing would be better away from the heat but relocating it would take some effort and I don't have a good place. The underside would be ideal from a temperature perspective but then you have water risks and it would be hard to get to for adjustment/programming.



When I picked up the machine, the woman asked me if I wanted the "pump thing". It's a domestic motor, kinda large and seems to be in good cosmetic shape.



Rotoflow head. I popped it off of the motor and it spins well which is a good sign.



A collection of worn portafilters. Glad to have them but they are not new. I'll need shim the gaskets to keep them from turning way past 90 degrees.



One has a cracked handle and they all have aluminum baskets that don't fit any of my tampers. I kinda like the single spouts so I'm psyched to have that.

[djmonkeyhater]

Not much time tonight.



I cracked the element out of the boiler. Water ran out crystal clear. One more point for the good guys. I plan on upsizing the wire gauge to this with some 10g that I have.



I like the smoke evidence on the cap. Makes it look tough. The bolts holding the cap on are really nice on these and with the whole cap coming off, CMA makes getting in there easy. You can actually see when it is clean and get your hands in there if it isn't. The thermal pipe/exchangers are to the left of this port.



This is brand new or very close to it. The seller told me that $500 worth of work had been done to it prior to her selling it. After seeing the new Sirai and this, I believe her.



Even the scale isn't bad. I jammed a screwdriver in there to see how thick it was and got some chunks to come off.

I just might run some water into this tomorrow. You know, after I put on my Kevlar apron. See where that cracked pipe is. If it's one of the sight glass loops, I could always run it without and just cap the ports on the boiler. This thing is so tight for cup clearance that I'm not sure you could see it while using it.

[djmonkeyhater]

I have another hour tonight.

So after the long look around the machine, I think that it's worthy of putting some water into it. The boiler and element look good, all of the pipes and tubing seem to be in place, the steam and water knobs spin smoothly and I feel lucky.



Into the torture chamber it goes. I use a garden hose as a connection in the basement. It took like 8 trips to the hardware store to get the right parts but now that I have them, I cherish them.



That flat stainless tray is out of the Futurmat. It's hard to have too many receptacles for water when you do the intial connecting and testing. I elevate the machines on the 4x4's to have space underneath. Sometimes for the pump, other times for identifying spraying water.

I ask for mercy from the gods and get my trusty 6 year old assistant to man the hose on/off.

"Henry"
"Yes"
"If Dad yells for you to shut off the water, will you please do it quickly?"
"Yes"
"Don't run upstairs like last time."
"But Dad, I was getting sprayed."



No power to the machine or pump. Hose is turned on. A small dribble on the side of the pump head and I slide the tray over tight underneath it.

There is now 40psi into the machine, stopped at the autofill solenoid and the boiler manual overfill valve. I stare under the machine with a flashlight waiting for some sort of workbench water torture from the "cracked pipe" but none shows.

I fill the boiler with the manual overfill and it takes a while for all 14 liters. A drip appears on the right side and I dash to my inventory of water holding vessels. At least it's not a spray. The yogurt tubs are too tall and the tupperware sandwich thing is too wide. AHA, I have a knock box that holds water and under it goes. I had a leak when I first fired up the Astoria that pushed out about a quart every 5 minutes. You had to run back and forth to the sink to keep ahead of it.

The leak is running along the frame rail but I can't see it coming from a pipe. Weird. It's small but definitely there. I pull the trays out from under the groupheads after releasing my assistant back to Bob the Builder and see that the leak is at the manual overfill valve. There is a good chance this will be easier than I thought.

And the gauge works. I always worry about them but them seem to be pretty robust.



Since I'm feeling lucky tonight, I wire the pump up to a switchable 220v line I have handy. You can see my not so code compliant wiring job to the right.



I hit the switch and it pops up to brewing pressure. Pump sounds good and strong. This thing gets closer to being useable.

I think that I might take a closer look at the power switch wiring tomorrow and see about sending some electrons into Frankenstein's heart.

[HB]

"Henry"
"Yes"
"If Dad yells for you to shut off the water, will you please do it quickly?"
"Yes"
"Don't run upstairs like last time."
"But Dad, I was getting sprayed."

I've had variations of this same conversation dozens of times ("Yes, but the point is...").

[networkcrasher]

Just subscribing.. this is a fun rebuild to watch.

[HB]

FYI: Unlike CoffeeGeek, you don't need to post to get notifications. Just click Watch this topic for replies at the very bottom of the thread... yes, I know it's well hidden.

[networkcrasher]

Ah very nice! Thanks Dan.