Greetings from Beaufort, SC! I am delighted to have found this forum.

I purchased my La Pavoni while living in Napoli in 1986. It has served my family well over the past 30 years. The only repair needed was a new power switch.
However, now it is only heating up and providing enough steam for one pull. After that first pull, the pressure drops below 0.5 bar -not enough pressure to produce additional cups.

After a cool down, the Professionale will heat back up and produce another 'single' cup before dropping pressure.

Any advice on how I should proceed in a repair? I see an 'adjustment' screw....

Cheers! Chip

As you can see by the condition, it has been well-used!

Is there scale in the boiler? When was the last time you descaled? Pressure stat clogged?

That adjustment is used to set the point where the pressurestat turns on and off. Since your machine comes up to normal pressure (from cold) I don't think you'll gain anything by fiddling with that.

I suspect your heater circuit is cutting out when it gets hot. Could be a wire or connection but also might be a flaky thermofuse. Your machine appears to have the old style melting thermal link fuse hiding in that red sheath. Normally when that fuse opens, it stays open. But sometimes they will go intermittent on you and that makes them hard to check with a simple multimeter. One way to diagnose an intermittent problem with this fuse is to temporarily bypass it and see if that fixes the problem. Fixing it would require soldering in a replacement fuse, or rigging a new style resettable fuse. I suspect that this machine originally had a different type of element and looked like this: http://www.francescoceccarelli.eu/La_Pa ... r/pr80.JPG with the thermofuse tucked into a well in the base. More info on Pavoni therofuses from Francesco Ceccarelli can be found here: http://www.francescoceccarelli.eu/La_Pa ... to_eng.htm


I don't suggest you try to bypass/test/fix it yourself unless you have electrical expertise.

It looks like it's time for an overhaul, anyway, before the rust eats through the base. Without that you could soon after electrical connections exposed to water.

So I re-crimped the thermal link -as it seemed to be a bit loose and made sure all the connections were snug.

And now the unit is working fine.

Now you have a machine with no thermal fuse protection. Many early Pavoni Pro's did not have that, so you can use it, but with care. If you unplug it when not in use that would help.

I agree with Gary though that this machine looks like it could use an overhaul, including dealing with the rust and replacing wires and connectors that look iffy.

P.S.

Just to be clear, are you saying that all you did was re-do those two butt-splice connectors, and not remove anything? If so, your thermal fuse had already been removed and your last problem was probably just in the butt splices. If you're going to run it like that, your best fix would be to buy some suitable wire and crimp (or crimp+solder) on a new ring terminal to replace that entire wire with the two superfluous butt connectors.

That's how I found it- and I agree that it looks sketchy.

(And again this morning, after warming up/pressurizing once, the power remains on (switch lit) but the heating element cools down.)

We bought this machine in 1986 in Naples Italy during my first assignment as a Navy Corpsman. My wife reminded me that we had to have it repaired during the first yr. we owned it. The power switch was replaced. Maybe that thermal link and heating element was replaced then too?

I agree that it needs a restoration and will attempt it myself. Looks like I found the right forum!