First and foremost, 1st line and Jim have provided me the best customer service I have ever received. Secondly, I love the two group PV Lusso....but it has taken a Long while to get to this point. I have been using it for over a year now.

Build Quality: The machine is durable and simple but rough around the edges. The tolerances are all over the map, the chrome is sloppy, the brass pistons and ss piston shafts show handling and stray machining marks, etc...

Coffee Quality: It churns out fantastic coffee with little practice. I roast my own beans with a Whirley Pop, use a 1963 Trosser German Army hand crank conical burr grinder, a spice jar for a tamper, and softened tap water.

Quality control: In short- PV sucks in this department. I have to assume that it was built by a near blind, hung-over dude with palsy...making it through the morning on a quad quad shot of espresso:

1. Dose baskets are the wrong size and fall out of the portafilter- fixed with 2 wraps of
elec. Tape

2. The water tank cap came without a gasket- fixed with O-ring from Ace Hardware.

3. The control box failed after less than 3 hours of use- Jim from 1st line is the best. He
helped me trouble shoot over phone. He works crazy hours. Shipped me a new
box with return shipping paid so I could return the defective one.

4. There was black production grime and finger prints on the underside of the cup
warming tray and on the inside of the machine....filthy and unprofessional- fixed with
rag and hot soapy water.

5. The pressurestat fitting was loose and was letting steam by. There was no pipe tape
on any of the threads. - fixed/checked all fittings with hand tools.

6. The inside of the tank was filthy and appeared to have been tested with muddy river
water, or not cleaned before/after the two parts were welded together.-fixed by rinsing
over and over again while the heating element was out (part of the control box trouble
shooting process). Also preformed a de-scale.

7. The heating element ceramic insulator is cracked and missing a small chunk. - No fix.
It works fine.

8. Piston gaskets failed after a few months. This is where I may have something to contribute. The failure was progressive. The spring lever would jump up about halfway after being compressed. Common sense told me that this was a piston gasket failure. After scanning posts on this sight, my thoughts were confirmed. HB also provided me valuable insight into the disassembly process. Thank you all for your contributions. Once I got things apart (more on this to follow) it was clear that the gaskets had never been lubed. The edges had crumbled and degraded. I sent a photo to Jim at 1st Line and he sent me 6 new ones ASAP. I lubed them with some food quality silicon grease from Ace Hardware and reassembled. It works better than it ever has. For the first time the machine makes truly fantastic espresso. Prior to the gasket replacement I was a bit surprised at the grind/tamp requirements. Things had to be relatively coarse and loose or the lever would travel back up much too slowly. My belief is that the friction caused by the poor seals and lack of lubrication caused this behavior...before completely failing. My proof: I put 2.5 more cranks on my grinder adjustment screw, and apply much more pressure with the tamper vs. just enough pressure to create head space as I had done in the past. These changes in settings were necessary to maintain the proper lever travel time when pulling a shot. This has proven consistent over various beans/roasts/ages.

Disassembly/reassembly process:

1. Roll up a bath/beach towel so that it just fits under the Group heads

2. Remove the retaining ring that holds the piston shaft through-pin in place. You do not have to remove the roller pin assembly.

3. Mark the levers and their orientation...the rear pin that holds the roller in place is not in the center of the lever arm. It is possible to put the lever handles on upside down and have one a couple inches lower than the other when at rest. The easy fix if you discover this after things are completely reassembled (don't ask) is to do a really hard tamp/fine grind and pull a shot. The lever will come back up so slowly that you can pull the piston shaft through-pin by hand, flip the lever and replace the pin before the spring tension returns.

4. Tap the pin out with a hammer and punch and set the lever aside. There is some spring tension here and it will partially release when the pin comes out.

5. Hold a piece of wood over the piston shaft top and give it a tap with a hammer. This will allow the spring to pop the shower screen and piston off and out of the machine in one fluid motion. The towel acts to disperse all the spring energy and eliminate the excitement and damage caused by the explosive release of the very powerful compression springs. The towel also eliminates the need for clamps. Please be sure to place the rolled up towels as part of step 1. Remember, my gaskets were binding, when you remove the pin in step 3 things may fly apart without the aid of the hammer.

6. If you are replacing the gaskets, you will need a lot of hand strength. Make a sketch of their orientation before you remove the old ones. I thoroughly coated all the gasket surfaces with food grade silicon grease and placed them in the grove on one side of the piston so they would be held in place. I then used my index fingers to pull/stretch the gasket into the grove. The process is very similar to stretching a tire over a rim with your fingers functioning as the tire irons. I did not want to use screwdrivers or tools for this as I was afraid of damaging the new gaskets. Actually, you may want to order a couple extra just in case you screw one up.

7. To reassemble I utilized a 2X4 and bolt/nut/washer to function as a screw jack. This process was developed by another member on this sight: Ponte Vecchio Lusso piston removal - revisited . I tuned the 2X4 so that the long side is lying on the frame to disperse the pressure more evenly, provide less chance of slipping, and give me more space to work. I used a 4" x 1/2" bolt. This brings up a comment. There was some pseudo-engineering discussion re material strengths, stresses, etc... with this process. IMHO this is BS . The pieces and parts involved are more than robust enough to accept the minor stresses of compressing the spring this way. This process works beautifully and is much safer than utilizing clamps etc... to compress the spring. Simply turn the nut until the bolt head comes into contact with the piston head. You are going to want some electrical tape or a felt furniture pad on the bolt head so that it does not scratch the piston face. Once a little pressure is applied and the piston gasket flange has a slight bow, you are going to use a screwdriver to GENTLY work the leading flange of the gasket into the piston bore. It will easily slip into place, but be sure it is in around the entire circumference.

8. Slowly start turning the nut to compress the spring and push the piston up into its bore until its face to just past flush with the edge. Replace the lever/pin and verify its orientation. Back off bolt and remove. Pop the shower screen back into place.

9. Top off your boiler, heat the unit up, and do a bunch of pulls to flush out any stray silicon and you should be good to go.

Again, I would like to thank all the contributors to HB. I hope this post adds a little something to the wisdom.

Ciao Nick,

That's one heck of an ordeal -- at least you learned a lot, and thanks for sharing that with us. Either Ponte Vecchio found somebody better to do QC at the factory, or I got lucky. I like to think I got one of the lubricated machines. But my Lusso arrived without the lever handles! WTF?! Jim, bless him, Fedexed me the handles right away.

It goes to show, there are no sacred cows among Italian espresso machines. It is amazing what we pay for what we put up with, all for a few minutes of bliss every day. Hmm, that reminds me of something...

Very informative.... although I am not looking forward to the process when it becomes necessary

-steve