[title inspired by one of my forum forebears, Mark Hoy. Thanks for the manuals... and the excellently documented restoration!]
This beautiful machine hails from San Francisco, and doesn't appear to have been used much at all. Great, right? Unfortunately, the machine doesn't seem to have been used much at all. Or cleaned. Ever.
The portafilters were completely gross. I've never seen scale on top of gobs of rancid coffee. I don't understand how anyone can be so stupid as to make coffee using equipment this dirty. I mean, you wouldn't bake a cake in a casserole dish without cleaning out the casserole remnants first, would you? Disgusting.
As you can imagine, the group was a piece of work. I just about destroyed the shower screen screw getting it dissassembled. It was stuck bad.
Still, nothing revolutionary. It's gotten pretty clean with a little bit of work.
The one bit of unexpected horror (considering this machine was sold as "working fine") was that the pump was completely seized! Pulled it off the motor, and the motor is intact... spins perfectly. The pump's spindle was stuck like a rock, and it took me some serious torquing with a wrench to un-seize it. It still spun really roughly, so it's getting retired to use as a bookend...
The seller has agreed to cover the cost of the new pump in the form of a partial refund, so all is well, other than having to wait a week to try the machine out.
I completed a full descale of the boiler and all tubing last night... I will post more pics, issues, etc. as the story unfolds.
I'm looking forward to some tasty 'spro.