Well I did it. Why? I have no idea, and I have beat myself up as much as I want to about this. Suffice to say in I may have burned out the element in my beautiful, and in almost perfect shape, 1964 Europiccola . I have uploaded a picture to show the shape it is in. It hurts just to talk about it. But there may be hope. I perused the forum on this subject and noticed that it still might be possible that it has some life left. I am pretty handy with electrical/electronics so I tested it with my Fluke. The maximum element shows that each pole is grounded even though the resistance between poles is fine. When I test the minimum element, it is fine. Resistance is very good and neither pole is grounded. What I was wondering...is there any test to take, short of plugging it in, that would confirm a bad element? I did remove the ceramic insulators to see if they were cracked and they are not. I hope someone can offer some help. I recently purchased an element removal tool from Orphan Espresso, so I believe I can remove it if necessary. I would greatly appreciate any assistance anyone can offer on this. I love this thing and do not want to retire it to the junkyard. Especially because of the shape it is in. I do have a ground fault protected circuit I can plug it into if necessary, to see if it works, but I would like to have a reasonable amount of insurance that it is safe to do.
Jeff

So, you have tested both elements to be good....they read a resistance. So, if you put one test lead to the terminal end and the other test lead to the base itself, do you get a reading? If you get a reading here there is a short indicated by wild readings high low in between all over the meter readout. If you get resistance pole to pole on the high is it stable or does it wander? If it wanders it may be the short that you are reading on the high element and not resistance in the element itself. No reason to take it apart quite yet since there is likely nothing to see in there but you can examine the element for a rupture of something from above.....a visibly burned element would not be giving you the readings you describe.
The best hope is that there is indeed a short from the area around the terminal end to the brass cap. The sealant at the plate can degrade and take on moisture, enough to cause a wandering short giving readings as I described above. Simply resealing it is not enough to fix it. This can be fixed (we are working on a little kit to do this properly and a how to guide) but if the short is inside the tube somewhere it is impossible to find let alone fix.

Doug,
Thanks so much for the reply. Something weird happened when I went to test the elements today. There was no short anywhere!! The reading on the high element pole to pole was 20.5 and rock steadly. when I tested it touching one pole and the base, it read 0. This was true for both poles. The reading on the low element was 60.5 and rock steady. I cleaned the ceramic insulators really good with some ememry cloth to be sure there is nothing on them that would cause them to short. The next thing would be to wire it up and plug it in, but I want to be sure I haven't missed sometihing. I swear on my mothers grave that the high element showed a reading to ground while touching either pole and the base of the element housing. I tested this more than once as well. The last time I tested it was yesterday. What could be happening? Is there a ghost in the house that fixed it? This is totally confusing to me now. I am not sure whether I should go ahead and wire it up or what? If I do wire it, I have a fuse that I purchased from your website store, and I would like to wire that in as well. Is there anywhere that shows how to wire it? I want to be sure to avoid anything like this in the future if it is still good. Again thanks for the reply.
Jeff

Sounds like a good self healing happened overnight, but I fear that gremlins once at work can return to do their evil work at some time. Sounds like you have degraded sealant around the terminals, under the ceramic insulators. Check with a toothpick to see if the red or brown stuff around the terminals is complete, cracked, crumbly, etc. It should be smooth hard and shiny. The stuff used to seal the there is an electrical insulating paint called glyptal, very old school stuff....or your machine may have shellac sealant (if it is red it is glyptal).
The wiring is pretty simple as the fuse must be placed to interrupt the electricity if it blows....the long wire containing the thermal fuse....take off the hot lead to the low watt element and hook one end of the fuse to the hot wire and the other end to the terminal of the low watt and tuck the fuse part under a (the) brass bar that connects the neutral side of both elements. If you have no brass bar then there is a small fabrication to do to replace the wire that joins the two....but your machine is old enough to be a bit different so a pic would help.

Hi again Doug,
I thought about what you wrote in your comments about the sealant being compromised and the moisture causing erratic shorts. That makes perfect sense. When I thought about it further, I belive the reason that i now have good readings and prior to this I did not, would be the moisture finally evaporating from the sealant, leaving nothing to cause any short.
I checcked for the sealant under the ceramic insulators and on the high element it appears not to have any. There is about a 1/4 to 1/2 inch deep hole around the post that has nothing in it. It looks the same as a fence post sitting in a hole prior to being filled with dirt. The low terminals are not missing anything. The sealant comes right up to the brass bottom and it is rock hard. I am really not sure what was used. I tried your suggestion about the toothpick, but could not really get anything. However, it looks as if it could have been brown and not red. Do you know when you might be coming out with the kit?
I do have a picture that I took of the bottom and the wireing. I took it the same time I sent the pictures to you a few months back. It shows clearly the way it was wired, so that is a no brainer. When I put it back together, I will be sure to include the fuse. So what would the next step be?

This is a follow up to my dilemna.
I was able to conclude after waiting a significant amount of time, that my elements, both high and low, were not shorted. It appears that there was indeed moisture around the posts due to the material that surrounds them being melted out because of the overheating. I was really in a quandry as to how to repair it, however. Unfortunately Doug said he was going to put together a kit to do this, indicating that it was not just a matter of filling them in (see previous threads). I waited some time and tried to contact them several times, leaving messages both here in his mailboxes, and several on his site. I never got any replies. So faced with fixing this on my own or just letting it sit as parts, I read some more posts here. I do give Doug the credit as he explaiined that Barb apparantly packed a similar element with some sort of epoxy putty in one of his posts, although he did not specify what puttly she used. I started serarching the internet for the various epoxy puttys and came up with what I thought would work. It is called multi-metal epoxy, and it is available at Ace hardware. Simple enough. So I spent about $5.00 with tax and purchased a tube. I read the directions carefully which indicated that it sets in about 4 minutes. I can tell you that it really does set that fast. I filled in around all the posts and waited about 24 hours to be sure it was fully cured. I smoothed out the rough areas of putty and then replaced the ceramic insulators and wired it up again. Fortunatlely I took a picture of the wiring prior to taking it apart. I also installed a fuse. I covered the exposed wiring that was left from the fuse ends with heat shrink tubing. It turned out pretty good. I replaced the rubber bottom and then held my breath whle I plugged it into a ground fault protected socket. It started heating up to my relief, so I switched it into the high mode. As i did the rubber on one area of the bottom snaped into place and I thought the damn thing blew. GRIN It was cooincidental that it did that as I was switching it, but it did give me a bit of a fright. I let it come to full steam, which is a little over 1 bar, and pumping steam out the relief valve, and then pulled a shot. It is just as it was prior to the meltdown, and actually better as it is now fused. I have a lot more experience as well, and I feel I know the machine better. Thank God I have my beloved Pavoni back. There is nothing like it. You lever guys know what I am talking about....THE END.
Jeff

Frobaggy, sorry I missed your questions...could have been when our website and email was haywire....but glad you got it all sorted out and not shorted out.

Bluecold, thanks for the link posting....the method really does work to cure a shorted element and the Glyptal sealing is strictly OEM quality...we use it all the time and it really dresses up the terminals on a rebuild.

And by the way, when we say we are working on a tweak or kit, we actually do it and put it on the website (sometimes it takes a while since the first little bottles melted and we lost a quart of the precious thermal paint), and once it is there we generally shy away from making big pitches here or elsewhere to huck the kit or fix....seems to us that once it is a for sale thing that it is up to others to ferret out the goods and not for us to make commercial type posts....always glad to help with any advice within the realm of our experience but leave the linking for others to do. There is a ton of stuff buried on the website that we are sometimes surprised nobody knows about....or maybe you do, who knows?