Hi All,

I am new to this forum and am happy I found it. I presently have a 2-group Cimbali Bistro at work that I am feeling responsible for and just bought a pretty old Microcimbali on a flea market. This is the old style with the aluminum pressure container, serial number 42101 (if anybody can tell me what year that is?). It hasn't been used excessively, but it has quite a bit of scale inside. I am trying to thoroughly clean it before putting it to use. I have gotten pretty far, go the lever/piston/spring assembly out, and also could open the bottom housing for the electrical stuff. I took off the nut from the threaded rod that connects the boiler housing to the base plate on which the heating elements are mounted. Now I would like to take the boiler housing itself off the base plate for cleaning and descaling. My questions are:
- Is this a good idea?
- are there any good usable limestone removers especially for aluminum?
- how do I get the boiler off the base plate. From the dteailed drawing, which I manage to lay my hands on, I can see that there is a gasket between the two. Nothing budges, though, even when I use gentle force. What is the trick? Ist it just stuck because of scale? Is ith screwed in? Any special tools or tricks??

Thanks,

Chris in Amsterdam

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Chris, would you mind posting a link to that 'detailed drawing' you mentioned? Or perhaps posting some pictures of your dissassembled machine? I'd love to take a look at it!

As far as I know, the only downside to taking apart an old machine is that you might ruin some gaskets . . . but as the MicroCimbali is still be made you should have no problem getting new ones. So no worries!

Henry

Hi Henry,

Not sure anymore where exactly I found that drawing. I found it again on: http://www.coffeecrew.com/compone.../gid,23/Itemid,98/, but for some reason the file seems corrupted there. If there is any way to attach files in this forum, I can upload the two files, otherwise I can email it to you. Just send me a private message.

As far as taking it apart, I am sure I need to replace gaskets anyway, but this thing is so strongly stuck that I am afraid of breaking something. I tried with gentle, but considerable force already. Maybe I overlooked some trick, it is screwed in, or there is some hidden screw or something. It would be good for cleaning to take the bottom part with the heater coils off the aluminum boiler, because the bottom part can then be treated with regular limestone remover, and a new gasket is probably a good idea anyway.

Chris