2-gang Ponte Vecchio Lusso -- To get to the thermal shutoff, take off the cover. To take off the cover, take off the knobs. But how? No set screw, no little disc hiding an internal screw . . . Help!

If there is, as you say, no set screw or plastic cover to remove to get to a hidden bolt, then the knob must be held on with tension and you'll have to pop it off.

You could try emailing Jen from this thread, she's obviously been in her machine a lot lately!

Heckie wrote:If there is, as you say, no set screw or plastic cover to remove to get to a hidden bolt, then the knob must be held on with tension and you'll have to pop it off.

That was my next guess, but I was afraid to break something else in the process if there was some sort of secret mechanism. Thanks for the quick reply.

There is supposed to be screw in the middle of the knob. You unscrew it and pull of the knob and that is that...

jfrescki wrote:You could try emailing Jen from this thread, she's obviously been in her machine a lot lately!

Thanks, will do.

tekomino wrote:There is supposed to be screw in the middle of the knob. You unscrew it and pull of the knob and that is that...

I noticed that design on a spare parts Website, but there seems not to be a little disc in the center of the knob covering the screw that connects the knob to the shaft. (This is beginning to sound a little silly . . .)

I don't think there is a disc You can see screw directly. It is crude design...

There are two style of knobs with the Lusso; 1) the ribbed round knob or 2) the star shaped knob. Both have a screw that connects the middle of the knob with the top of each water/steam tap shaft. The star knobs also have a 'plug cap' that covers the screw, the round knob does not. But that is neither here or there. They both have that screw

The issue with the knobs is that they are wedged solid onto the tap/water shafts, and are incredibly hard to pull out even with the connecting screw taken out.

You have two choices at this point.

- Yank the knobs out real hard. They do release with after some jaw clenched straining, or better and easier still
- spanner out the whole steam and tap shaft from the housing inside the box. Again there is overtorque that you may need to wrestle with, but once you have cracked it they will pull out relatively easy. You can take out the plastic "Sama" cover by unscrewing it from the centre front panel and manouvring it out from the top. You then have access to the steam shaft and housing. Once you have done that, you can then unscrew the casing from the bottom of the machine (gently resting the machine on the grouphead(s)) and pull it out.

Then you are in.

Aha, that's where the confusion lies, two different knob styles! ziobeege, thanks for the clarification. Looks like I'm a star knob kind of guy, although I swear there's no plug cap on the thing. I'll let you all know which approach won in the end: brute force or a table full of loose parts. I never thought I'd miss the "simplicity" of tightening the steam shaft on my La Pavoni Professional . . .