Developed a dripping grouphead in a ~6y/o Elektra Microcasa a Leva (MCaL). So today I replaced the piston seals.
No being the brightest bulb in the room I thought you had to remove the lever then just unstack the spring, seals & piston. WRONG! Became apparent while removing the pivot rod that there is a bit of preload on the spring. Too late. Removed the lever to find out the piston does not unstack. Pried off the old hard relative to the new seals. Heated up the new seals in some hot water. Not sure if it makes any difference in ease of stretching the seals. Stretching on the new seals is sort of like mounting a too tight tubular bicycle tire. But no sticky mastik to deal with.
Down to the woodcarving bench to clamp the unit together. There is no way without a vise/clamp you will be able to preload the spring. I would recommend using a vise/clamp if you plan to remove the lever & pivot rods. Got lucky and everything aligned up the first time.
Lubed up the seals with some food grade silicone grease. Inserted.... Well not really. New seals are real snug. With the old seals I have been able to easily remove the piston unit, clean the bottom of the piston and pop out the dispersion screen/gasket for cleaning. Replacing the piston unit was no problem. With the new seals you need to feed the gaskets into the piston chamber. What worked for me was applying significant firm pressure with the fingernail while rotating the whole piston unit around. Once the edge is in there is no problem in feeding in the rest of the gasket.
Dan, any chance of adding a FAQ for specific lever machine regarding subjects such as gasket/seal replacement. Not sure if I'm the only person who has found out by experience the right & wrong way of doing things. Sure will make life easier. There is always the Search function, but at FAQ would be real convenient.
