Got the machine new, but it has been sitting for a year and a half without being used. After several uses and emptying the boiler after each use, it still has the smell of burnt rubber or plastic in the water that comes from the group and steam wand. Any ideas for a cure?

Pulled the heating element and all looks good inside the boiler. The seals are in colors, red for the heating element, green for the group. Pretty, but hopefully, not many of us will have to see them very often.

I haven't pulled apart the group yet, the culprit is probably in there. There are little pieces of something sticking out of the dispersion screen. I hate messing with machinery that has major spring assemblies

Just undo the two allen head bolts and the whole assembly pulls out. There should be no need to take part the spring assembly.

Good luck with finding the cause.....

Mike

You should also be able to pull the screen off without pulling the piston assembly.

michaelbenis wrote:Just undo the two allen head bolts and the whole assembly pulls out. There should be no need to take part the spring assembly.

Good luck with finding the cause.....

Mike

Thanks Mike. I had considered removing the lever pin like you would with a Europiccola. That would have been a big mistake

The smell is coming from the upper piston seal. Curious, because the seal is still flexible and looks to be in good shape. A small ring of rubber is fused to the inside of the piston sleeve, probably caused by the long period of non-use.

The smell is coming from the upper piston seal. Curious..

.

Do you still get the smell from the steam wand?

Don't know, it's still in pieces waiting for a new seal and gasket kit. The smell permeated the entire inside of the machine, so i've got some scrubbing to do. Rubbing compound couldn't knock down the rim of rubber around the inside of the piston sleeve. A very fine and well worn piece of emery paper did the job.

Good luck with the rejuvination, Fullsack. I hope the elbow grease and new seals do the trick.

I bet so many machines sit on dealers' shelves for at least that long, but I guess part of the problem comes down to the particular rubber that the seals are made of, and how this interacts with the lube in question. Maybe it would help to store machines with the boiler cap off?

After 2-1/2 year of daily use, my Ponte Vecchio Lusso started spurting a little water now and then from the hole at the backside of the group. Upon insection I found the seals to be flexible, but developing little cracks at the edges. As I stretched the seals to remove them, the flexibility and stretch gave way to gooey cracking and the seals came off in pieces. With the new seals installed I noticed a definite improvement in the quality of my shots. Next time I will replace my seals on a shorter time schedule, before they start to leak.

Best wishes.

The piston replacement seals, as well as the original seals look to be made of a rubber/plastic combination and IMO, are not the quality of the Cremina or Pavoni seals. After a short time, the burnt plastic smell returned. It is detectable in the water from the cooling flush and detectable in the shot. Don't know what the fix is and I'm reluctant to use the machine until the problem is cured.

Interesting observation about those Mcal seals. Both the manufacturer supplied Mcal and PV seals are REALLY hard and unforgiving. We have a lot of seals made from Viton (very stretchy with a durometer rating of 70, which is as hard as one can get in Viton) and EPDM rubber (also stretchy at a durometer of 80, once again max duro for this type of seal). Both of these materials make a seal that is easy to install and seals fine, lasts as long oas the OEM seals....but those factory seals are like rocks....very difficult to istall, real hand crampers and generally one gets tempted to use two awls to intall them, and when they roll in the piston groove they are hard to maneuver into the right position. I had not thought that they could be some composite but that would make sense in explaining the hardness and lack of elasticity. I had assumed that the factory rubbers were simply stale, likely having been jobbed out in some huge quantity and as they age they get stiffer.
The catch with the Mcal rubbers is that they are the only source for those two sided bottom W seals that fit the Mcal and a couple other machines, but if it is the upper V profile seal some other could be used, with some shims in the groove to snug it all up. That is , if it is only the upper seal that is causing the problems. You could even resort to a high temp silicone O ring for the upper, along with some shimming with teflon or silicone tape, or go custom with both seals using silicone, but it wouldn't be factory.