Hi All

I recently became the proud owner of a used Mazzer Major (the older model without the interlock collar) and I could use some help. I am, to put it mildly, a bit technically challenged. While I have disassembled one or two grinders before, it generally involves me realising just too late that the screw I just removed has dropped a nut inside the body of the grinder, or hours of cursing to realise something is reverse threaded.

With this in mind, does anyone have any advice or warnings before I embark on the following:

1. Replacing the burrs. Replacement burrs are on the way and this looks to be within my competence. I have read the warnings of cross threading the adjustment collar so I will take extra care here.

2. Removing the attached tamper and portafilter fork. Is there anything I need to be on the look out for here?

3. Doser vane mod to improve the sweeping of the doser. All of the links to Teme's original blog seem to be dead. Does anyone have any links to an easy guide to this mod. I would like to disassemble as much of the doser as necessary to give it all a good clean and found this guide http://www.fotchbook.com/faq/mazzer/body_parts.html is there anything else I should know?

4. Removing the autofill switch in front of the chute. The switch itself doesn't bother me, only that it blocks my access to sweep the chute. Can I remove this without getting too much into the wiring?

5. Anything else I should consider while I'm doing all of this? I plan on single dosing with a tamper in the throat if that makes a difference.

Thanks in advance.
Bruce

Hello. I did similar mods on my Major (albeit a newer one)

BruceR wrote: 2. Removing the attached tamper and portafilter fork. Is there anything I need to be on the look out for here?

The tamper just unscrews. On my Major, the portafilter fork had nuts inside the body and wouldn't detach fully. You'll probably have to remove the grinder's bottom plate.

BruceR wrote: 4. Removing the autofill switch in front of the chute. The switch itself doesn't bother me, only that it blocks my access to sweep the chute. Can I remove this without getting too much into the wiring?

You'll have to install a jumper.
A great resource : http://www.espressomyespresso.com/
Go to the "HOW-TO" section, number 17.

BruceR wrote:5. Anything else I should consider while I'm doing all of this? I plan on single dosing with a tamper in the throat if that makes a difference.

I've had best results filling up the throat of the grinder as to keep the weight of the tamper on the beans the whole time it's grinding. You'll have to put more than one dose in there for that to work and stop the grinder when you've ground enough.

I made up a hopper like chute, just rolled up some thick flexible plastic sheet material to form a tube, works well enough to prevent popcorning and maintaining a nice even grind due to the weight and it holds enough beans for three to four doubles.

Look at the Schectermatic Schnozzola. It really help get everything from the doser into the basket. I made mine out of brass. I can send you a how to pdf. If you're interested, email me.

Thanks for the replies everyone. Randy's photo guide is exactly the type of step by step instruction I need. I'm hoping the new burrs will arrive by the weekend and I've planned to spend Saturday getting stuck into the grinder.

In terms of needing a column of beans above the grinder throat, does anyone know if the small 320g Mazzer hopper (listed as fitting Mini and SJ) will fit this older Major? I've seen varying reports but the hopper it came with looks a lot like the standard SJ hopper so I'm tempted to give it a try. I tend to stick to one bag of beans at a time for espresso so that might be a better option for me. Got into single dosing because I used to change my Vario between espresso and pour over every morning, so now I'm getting curious about hopper dosing, especially if I can get the doser to sweep relatively cleanly.

Of course I couldn't resist trying a few shots before getting stuck into the cleaning and modding. I could get shots into the right time/brew ratio range, but I seemed to be very close to where the burrs started to chirp and the bottomless portafilter showed a lot of channeling and the stream/funnel was very thin. Taste wasn't as bad as I thought it would be but a bit on the sour side with very thin mouthfeel. Is this what you would expect from worn burrs? Coffee was a quite lightly roasted Kenyan I've only used for pour over so wasn't sure what to expect.

Also started poking around the grinder last night, got the tamper off and opened up the burr chamber which actually didn't look nearly as bad as I expected. Got the upper dosing vanes off as well and am starting to get my head around how the disassembly will go.

Thanks again
Bruce