The easiest way to take out the two piece collars is to loosen the screws enough so that you could use the screws to push the collars up out of their locations before completely take the screws out.

Test-fitting a rotary pump where the tank is and it looks like it fits well there. The machine is bare right now as I removed the panels to eventually paint them black using truck bed liner.

Can hardly wait to see how it turns out.

Couple of questions...

1) is it hard to get the stainless panels off without damaging them?
2) much more detailed, but have you thought about how you're going to manage steam boiler fills?

-Peter

Couple of questions...

1) is it hard to get the stainless panels off without damaging them?
It's not bad. I was able to pretty much keep the panels in their original shapes with existing dents. To remove the panels I had to take off the bottom of the machine and straightened out the small clips that keep the panels attached to the body, then I pushed the panels out from back of the machine.







2) much more detailed, but have you thought about how you're going to manage steam boiler fills?
I am only replacing the brew pump using the same path/tubes by extending the tubes connecting to the in/out of the Ulka pump and moving them over to the rotary pump. I'll be using the tube to the existing tank and extending it to an external water bottle because I can't plumb the machine at school, so the steam boiler will be filled using the existing smaller Ulka pump drawing water from the same bottle. The existing design has both pumps drawing water from the same tank, they're connected to tank via a T connection, so that stays intact.

Anyone ever have the issue of the BDB not giving you a fill water tank warning? I recently was in the middle of pulling a shot when no coffee came out, at first I thought that I may have choked the machine, but then I noticed the pressure was low. I turned off the pump and realised that the water reservoir was empty. Previously I would get a fill water tank warning but not this time. I reached out to the retailer that sold me the machine and Breville for advice and they advised me to clean the water tank to make sure the magnetic float wasn't stuck and to reset my machine. Neither things helped. Breville has offered to repair the machine under warranty as it has only been 4 months since I bought the machine. If I could avoid sending the machine back to Breville, I'd prefer that. For the record, I'm using tap water filtered with my fridge filter and here is the water analysis:
Alcalinity 28ppm
Calcium 16.5ppm
Chloride 8.3ppm
Hardness 50ppm

Any suggestions would be great.

thanks,
Mario

Welcome, Mario. I remember your posts and participation here on HB from years past. Good to hear from you again, too.

Interesting one. Not seen it before. If the the magnetic float is not stuck in the reservoir, then the next culprit would be the sensor that it triggers inside the body of the machine. It should be very near the float magnet. But it would be unusual for that to go bad. Your report is the first I've heard of. Keep us informed.

Your water looks great, by the way. Although Synesso says no chlorides at all, La Marzocco is OK with 30ppm. None is probably preferable, by my muni water has up to 25ppm and I have no corrosion. So you're probably good there.

BTW, I see you are in Canada. In the USA, Breville will have UPS box up the machine for you, so all you have to do is take it to them. Is it different in Canada?

-Peter

According to Breville, if I agree to the repair they'll send me a prepaid shipping label with instructions. I wanted to avoid the hassle of sending the machine back and being without a machine for 10-14 business days. Seeing as how this seems to be an unknown problem so far, I'll probably send the machine in to be fixed. I'm worried that I may not notice the empty tank sometime down the line and have the heating elements burn out in empty boilers.

Theoretically that should not happen because the it's the water level sensors in the boilers that allow heat to the elements if they sense proper water level. Save for the exception that if a descaling process goes wrong, this might happen to the steam boiler.

Something else that hopefully gives you confidence... the boiler elements are protected by thermal fuses. So it is usually the thermal fuse that melts in this case, and not the boiler element itself.

One last thing. If you send it out, be sure to list every little thing you can think of that might not be right.

-Peter

It's good to hear that the heating elements are protected, however I am able to run water through the group head until water no longer flows. There is no error at this point, the pump doesn't cut out automatically and the lcd screen simply reads out the boiler temp as though it were business as usual. The machine is so new there really isn't anything else wrong with it. I am still waiting to hear back from Breville for instructions on how they want the machine sent to them. Luckily I kept the box with all the packing materials, despite all the space it takes up in the basement

One more thing... what you see in the LCD is usually not boiler temperature unless it is flashing. Once it stops flashing, the temperature you see is the temperature you would expect in a Scace test... Which is not necessarily the boiler temp because it has a PID heated group head as well as a PID heated brew boiler. They used Scace devices in the calibration of the multiple heaters, so that what you set will be as close as possible to what a Scace test would show.

As for running water until it stops, flowing... the pump will only run for 90s at a time before the control system vents the solenoid and shuts off the pump. And as it runs, it draws from the tank unless there is a problem. Of course if the tank is empty... then that gets back to your original problem.

-Peter