Dear community,
I've owned my Pavoni Europiccola for several years. After I brought the machine in to a shop to have all the gaskets changed I'm experiencing an issue. The espresso starts to come out on its own before I even pull the shot. And when I do pull the shot there is hardly any pressure at all. I'm left with a very mediocre espresso - undrinkable in my opinion. I've spent many hours trying to fix this issue. I even installed a pressure gauge to make sure I'm getting accurate pressure inside the machine (I am). I'm trying on last time to ask this community if anyone has any suggestions. I not I'm afraid I have no other choice but to sell my Pavoni and try something else.

Some things I know are not the issue:
Grind - I have a Luigi Massor machine and the beans are ground as finely as possible
Pressure - I have a pressure stat that shows me I get .5-.6 bars of pressure

Here is the short video I put together. Appreciate any help. If you know a remote technician I'm happy to pay someone to try to troubleshoot over zoom/phone.

Adjust the grind. Make it finer. Firm tamp.

Have you replaced your burrs in your grinder? They get worn over time. Betting you need a new set and grinder clean. If not that then most likely your beans have aged into not espresso, while your Europiccola was in the shop.

Unless the burrs are new and need seasoning.

+1

I know little to nothing about lever machines, but my understanding is that when you lift the lever, water is drawn into the chamber and preinfuses the puck at very low (i.e., 0.6 BAR) or no pressure (i.e., low flow rate). Pressure only builds to espresso maximum when you press down on the lever.

It looks to me like the puck is offering little to no resistance to the flow, even during preinfusion, so you get a gusher right off the bat. By the time you start pressing down on the lever, there's no resistance at all, so it looks like there's no pressure in the chamber at all (because there isn't any!)

Check the grinder and make sure the coffee isn't stale.

It looks like your coffee isn't ground fine enough to create the resistance required to pull a shot. If you lift the lever up without the PF locked into the group, is the water dispersed pretty evenly around the dispersion screen?

The boiler pressure is quite low. its not what causing your problem here but for sure make it worse. Hotter water will cause your coffee to expand more and will help increasing the pressure in your grouphead. I would adjust it to 0.7-1 bar. But again as everyone pointed out its more in the coffee/grinder. Uncalibrated grinder/incapable grinder or put more coffee in the basket or both of them.
By the way how much grams do you put in the basket? From your video it looks to my eyes as not enough.

Only thing to add that hasn't already been covered that I can see is to make sure that your using fresh coffee as stale coffee won't give you the resistance necessary to provide back pressure on the lever. Since there's no water leaking around the basket your seals and gaskets seem to be fine and it's all up to the coffee to provide the resistance for the pull.

If you quickly pull down on the lever you may compress the coffee even further which may help, especially if you updose the basket, but you should probably check the grind and the freshness of the coffee. Quickly pulling down is not normally necessary, more of a workaround in this situation.

frankienap wrote:Dear community,

Pressure - I have a pressure stat that shows me I get .5-.6 bars of pressure

Probably too course a grind but..

This may sound counter intuitive but try three things.

First, adjust the p/stat up to at least 1 bar. Machine is running cold which will cause runny shots.
Second, back the grind off.
Third, do not tamp. Just level off and rest the tamper lightly on top.

I have rebuilt and owned five Pavs, mostly Pros, and in my experience and opinion after running them under every conceivable combination I have learned, just like on my Elektras, Gaggias and Lambro, tamping does absolutely nothing.

Someone else mentioned coffee freshness and that's a good call; how old is the coffee you are using? Also what size dose?