Hey everyone,
Summer's winding down, so I'm starting to get back to my machines.
This past spring I restored a lovely '91 Cremina and it was working great until July when it mysteriously blew up.
Ok, "blew up" may be a bit of an exaggeration, but there was a loud pop, followed by smoke.
When I took off the cover, I saw the following:


(apologies, for the clarity, I had to use my phone).

As you can see, I've got some seriously melted wires back there.
At the time of the pop, the machine was on and heating up with a full boiler of water.
To my knowledge, there were no leaks (I checked closely after rebuilding it) and the wiring harness was upgraded.
The "pop" was significant enough to sever a couple of the wires and looks especially focused on the one melted terminal.
I haven't had the courage yet to take a look at the element, for fear that it may be gone too.
Any thoughts on what could have caused this?
As I mentioned earlier, the machine worked fine for a couple of months beforehand...
Thanks everyone, I'll pop the hood and look at the element shortly.

Looks as if your hot wire may have shorted to ground under the terminal block. Perhaps it didn't even touch the element. We can always hope.

Seems the little lego euro connector suddenly decided it was a resistor and went into business as an auxiliary heating element. Can't see that this would effect the heating element in the boiler and cannot explain the sudden failure......in Canada, sometime in July, don't they flush the electric lines to clean out the excess electrons? that's what I have heard....like in the US when they flush the water mains to get the gunk out of the pipes....they just reverse the polarity and crank up the juice and you are good to go for another year! It is one of the benefits of living in a technologically advanced country, and from what I have heard they do not even charge you for the service! Some people have all the luck....

Well Doug,
On the bright side, I already had a list of a few things I needed to order from you and Barb, so I guess now I've just gotta tack on a couple more items...
Just received word that the boiler gasket for my Club is in the mail - looks like I'll be handling some back-to-back Olympia repairs!

garth breaks wrote:Just received word that the boiler gasket for my Club is in the mail - looks like I'll be handling some back-to-back Olympia repairs!

Hey Garth, where are you finding all these machines??? I'm in Kitchener/Waterloo and am all over the Toronto area kijiji and craigslist postings and rarely do I find anything.

There is evidence of moisture in that area - note the rust on the ground lug. Clean the area up (including the ground lug), replace the terminal block, and before inserting the wires, fill the blocks terminals with a dab of silicone grease (available from auto parts stores, meant to be used on spark plug wire boots and connectors). Also, clean and paint any exposed metal under the block to avoid corrosion in the future.

Snow is falling here in Toronto and with it comes the desire to stay in and fix things.
I revisited my Cremina last night and popped out the melted wiring block, have a look.



What I find interesting is that the failure came from the white wire side, which I thought was neutral.
Also of note, I didn't cut the black wire, it "popped" apart in the mini-explosion.
I'm going to swipe a terminal block from a Caffarex I recently nabbed that's months away from working (if ever) and attempt to get the Cremina back online tonight.
A couple of questions before I do:
1) Does it matter which terminal each of the gray wires go into? I've mapped them out so I can realign them with the black & white AC cords as they were before, but I'm curious if it makes a difference, given that they're both gray.
2) I'm going to pick up some silicone grease after work, should I put a dab over every hole when finished to protect the wiring from water (side wiring holes and top holes too)? I can't see any harm in doing so, but thought it might be worth throwing out to the hive-mind first.

Thanks as always,
GB

Jeez, if I got down to work only when it was snowing I sure would get a lot done this winter.....before the hive swarms let me add my 2 centavos..
1. the color of wires on a Cremina is meaningless from model to model as they are in a kind of rainbow world on their wiring. The black power wire goes to the side of the switch that when closed goes to the pstat and the white wire from the power cord goes to the other side of the switch, the one that comes from the second post of the heating element,,,the one with the little pigtail to the pilot light. The hot circuit is black and this circuit becomes neutral after the load (heating element).
2. you could use some dialectric grease as a general good housekeeping approach but the silicone may be an overstretch....if you have done the rebuild correctly there is no water to endanger the terminal block connector. Most of the common leaks are on the other side of the boiler.

Glad you are having fun in the snow