I just received a brand new Mara X, and I followed all setup instructions in the manual. Once getting to the section where it instructs to lift the group lever and let water run out for 30 seconds, I am getting water flowing out from somewhere in the machine straight into the drip tray. Nothing is coming out of the group head.

Any idea why water is not coming out of the brewing group, and instead from inside the machine straight into the tray? I'm a bit worried I'm going to have to try and reconstuct all the boxing, ship it back, and wait for a new one which could take weeks.

It sounds like the OPV (overpressure valve) is all the way open, and diverting the pump flow into the drip tray (it should only be doing this if the pressure exceeds 10 bar). This is something you can fix with a wrench and screwdriver. Call your vendor tomorrw and have them guide you through the fix over the phone. If you are feeling enterprising, you can google on OPV and Mara, and take a look for yourself based on the photos and videos.

Thanks for your help. I checked and the pressure bar goes just above 10 when I lift the lever and the water starts pumping out into the drip tray, nothing from the brew head. I'll give them a call tomorrow and have them run the process by me.

Did you get a Mara X with a flow control device? If you did that device just might be closed and you have to turn it open (counter clockwise).

I did get the flow control device, but it doesn't come installed, and I didn't get that far yet. Could that have something to do with it?

Is the whole device not installed already or just the lever you out on the device? The whole flow control device includes a heavy "mushroom". So on your Mara X the nut on top of the E61 group is flat?

Here's a photo of the top and also the box with the flow pieces in it (I assume).



Honestly not sure what I'm looking at. I'm a bit of a novice here haha.

Ok. The device is already isntalled on your machine and the parts in the box seem to be spare parts.
The big black part is the handle and you have to put it on the top of the brew group. Place the handle so it is at the most left position. The end of the handle should point at about 10 or 11 o'clock so it is touching or almost touching the top odf the machine like in this picture:

After that you have to turn the handle counter clockwise to the other side which will open the valve fully and then the machine will be able to put water through the group

Marmot wrote:Ok. The device is already isntalled on your machine and the parts in the box seem to be spare parts.
The big black part is the handle and you have to put it on the top of the brew group. Place the handle so it is at the most left position. The end of the handle should point at about 10 or 11 o'clock so it is touching or almost touching the top odf the machine like in this picture:
After that you have to turn the handle counter clockwise to the other side which will open the valve fully and then the machine will be able to put water through the group

Ok I'm going to give this a shot, thank you very much for your help. The website said it came uninstalled and with instructions of how to install, so that's a nice surprise, albeit one that I guess in this case confused things a little. At which position is the typical setting if I'm a beginner and not really looking to experiment with the flow control quite yet?

I think they meant that you just have to put the handle on top of the flow control device (which is already installed).
If the flow control device is fully closed at the current position (which seems to be that case since nothing comes out of your group) you have to put the handle on it like in the picture and then turn it fully to the other side. At that position it should have a flow rate more or less like a normal E61 machine. If you want you can then take the handle off again and it will work like any other machine.
Make sure you give the machine enough time to heat up. The Mara X needs about 20 to 25 minutes to fully heat up the group until you have the right temperature for brewing. I would also make sure the Mara X is in brew priority mode (switch on the right should be at 1).
The flow control will actually make it easier to extract coffee once you get to know it because you can for instance decrease flow if you groudn too coarse