As for pulling off the spade connectors, there is a little hole in the blades on the pump, and little tiny male nub that clips down into that hole. There is a place on the connector where if you press on it, it rocks the nub out of the hole and makes it easier to remove the connector.

There it is! Thanks.

Fortunately for me, once you pull them off the wrong way once, they come off pretty easily after that.

Sorry if it's been mentioned before, I just wanted to note that Breville will sell you spare parts if you contact them by phone / chat. I asked them about a steam dial cover and the hot water needle valve assembly. They are both listed as "discontinued" on eReplacementParts, but Breville had the cover for $10 and the needle valve assembly for $45. (I'm not saying these are great deals or anything, just giving examples). I don't know all of what they had, but it's worth asking if you need something. Also, the part numbers on eReplacementParts do not correspond to Breville's database, so it's best to just tell them the name of the part you're looking for.

Very good to know. I've never had to go that route but it's nice to know about. I would have bet money that there's no way they would sell parts in the USA.

The water valve drip continually confuses me. Not only because it never happened to me, but From the look of it's design, I don't know how it's possible to leak... unless it's not closing all the way any more. Whereupon, moving the knob an extra spline or two should fix it. For me, I would not want to blow $45 on a new water valve unless I was quite sure the one I had was for sure, not sealing right and resistant to fixing. Further, if one were to put in a brand new water valve with one or two splines off, it would still leak just like the one it replaced, because it's not closing all the way.

If you think Breville parts are expensive, you should see La Marzocco's markup.

-Peter

I'd gladly pay these prices for a reliable source of OEM parts for this machine.
(Not LM prices that is)

To my mind it is the only thing missing from the BDB. It is a fantastic machine. Breville does a fantastic job with warranty and repair. Now just give the home repair folks the parts they need and BAM -the total package!

One thing to note, is that they will only sell parts (so they will not send out free parts under warranty), and they said if I bought a part and did any "internal work" on the machine it would void whatever warranty I had left. So this is not really something you want to do until after 2 years with the machine

GregoryJ wrote:One thing to note, is that they will only sell parts (so they will not send out free parts under warranty), and they said if I bought a part and did any "internal work" on the machine it would void whatever warranty I had left. So this is not really something you want to do until after 2 years with the machine

This is to be expected. Though having said that, they don't have "tamper seals". So if you did "fix" something yourself, unless you did a real hack job of it, they would never know.

Greg, was it you who was having a drippy water tap issue? I recall some posts we shared back in Jan-Feb time frame about drippy water tap. I just can't remember if it was you. And if so, what was the resolution, if any?

-Peter

pcrussell50 wrote:Greg, was it you who was having a drippy water tap issue? I recall some posts we shared back in Jan-Feb time frame about drippy water tap. I just can't remember if it was you. And if so, what was the resolution, if any?

-Peter

Yes that was very recent. I think you were right, that it's just leftover condensation coming out, because it seems to only happen now after using the water valve. So, I'm not very worried about it anymore

Hi guys, i start playing a little with the BDB inner shower screen, since is pretty inexpensive. I used a sandpaper on a flat surface, bringing it from 10.7 mm original one to 8.75 mm ( i think that 9 mm is good, i went a little too far with this one ) What i saw is a better pressure on the shower screen, a more even flow. I'll try another one with this height, and also, some more holes, to see what happens.
Thanks!!

I've always had a problem with outer "ring" channeling in the BDB. Hundreds of dosing and distribution iterations at my end, but the out channeling always occurred.

I put it down to either the Breville basket or something strange going on around the shower screen.

Look forward to more of your findings

You are experiencing the "doughnut extraction". It is common all over espresso not particularly with the BDB. There are threads here on HB about it. Give a quick search and see what you come up with.

There are videos out there of BDB extractions that do not exhibit this behavior. Of course we generally don't know what basket they are using. My favorite basket of all time was the original -900 tapered basket. But they have become hard to find. A reasonable facsimile is the tapered EPNW ridged 14g basket. And it's cheap. That's what I use a lot recently.

[youtube] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3-b6Qr43vE[/youtube]

Stock screen:
[youtube] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0aVeezTl9Q[/youtube]

-Peter