Just thought i'd share a small revelation i had this week.

There is a lot of talk on how too much backfushing with detergent strips away the lube in e61 brew heads and may lead to premature wear on the cam mechanism.

This led me to slowly reduce the frequency of my detergent routine, by fear of overdoing it on the maintenance front. If it ain't broke, don't fix it some would say.

Well i've been noticing that my brew level has become sticky; it's harder to get it to move when it is either on the on or off position. My machine is a Rocket Evoluzione and it is not one year old. I didn't think that the pins would have already worn out and i use fairly soft water so i ruled out scale.

I took the lever out and found coffee gunk in the mechanism... Once cleaned out with cafiza and backflushed properly, it was back to a smooth if somewhat squeaky operation. I went back in and applied some Dow 111. Voilà!

So i guess i'm just saying that there is a balance to be reached between excessive cleaning and not doing much maintenance at all for fear of ruining things.

If your lever tends to stick in either position and if after manhandling it a bit it seems to free up temporarily, you might just have a gunked up cam! Backflush with some detergent and you should be good to go.