So the Aurora finally arrived. Unfortunately the courier gods did not smile kindly upon me. The machine must have been dropped, the lower steel frame has been bent and all of the loose parts (lever handle, portafilter, driptray, steam wand) are missing. The courier company is searching for the parts so hopefully they turn up.

On a bright note the machine is in pretty good condition. The chrome parts look great. This machine seems to have lost the top part of the case and cup warmer area and someone has made a fairly rough one in it's place so I had been playing with the idea of fabricating a new case. With the damage in transit I'll definitely be doing that now.

Here it is before sending



and after



The machine has an interesting configuration of the plumbing. I had wondered before it arrived as to whether it was a HX or a single boiler as the HX inline feed was disconnected. It also didn't have the connections for the horseshoe HX that I have seen on other models. After much searching on a german coffee forum I came across a third configuration, a straight HX the goes through the centre of the boiler from the bottom to behind the group. I'm fairly confident that this Aurora has the straight HX configuration.
The weird part is that someone has rerouted the HX inlet line from the mains to the top of the boiler? It has been attached to a splitter with the hot water tap. I have no idea what that would do to shot temp but I can't imagine it would be good.

Very unusual piping, I wondered about it when I saw it on the auction site. The mains water feed to the HX is disconnected instead boiler water is piped to the HX inlet, I suspect it would work like a dipper model.
It also looks like the pressurestat is plumbed into the steam tap piping.

Very unusual piping and by the look of it definitely modified after factory. I plan to plumb it back in the original configuration but it shouldn't be hard.

I may have been done as a means of dealing with the HX pressure build up and also a group which runs on the cool side, my Aurora has a cold nose requiring the group temp to be pumped up.

A few updates. I've completed the teardown. I removed the group and gave it a good clean. Oddly the group gasket was a piece of white perspex. I don't think it was terribly effective as a seal. Which brings me to the first issue, the boiler mount area of the frame and the mounting screws were heavily corroded and needed to be drilled out.





I've discovered the reason for the re-plumbed HX line. The brazing at the junction of the top of the boiler and the HX line has cracked, meaning that if it the HX was plumbed to line pressure the boiler would have continuously filled. It shouldn't be an issue to re-braze and then I can revert it to the original configuration.

Unusually bad damage for a courier if it was packed correctly? Was it on a pallet or just sitting free? I would ask the seller about the missing parts.

That's unfortunate, you seem to be looking on the bright side of things tho. Good luck on the rebraising.

Unfortunately the packing wasn't great either, no pallet and little padding. I did just get an email from the courier company saying that they think they have found the missing parts so fingers crossed it's all there.

Lucky for me I have a brother who makes bespoke steel bike frames. He's pretty dem good with an oxy torch so brazing up the crack will be a no problem.

The group gasket is probably a teflon material.

I've got teflon gaskets on the way from orphanespresso.
Vicroamer I was having a look at your thread on coffeesnobs with your flow control screw modification.
Have you found it works well? Do you think it's a worthwhile mod to do?
Thanks