I had an extended chat with Johnny Cerini this afternoon. A couple of months ago, I had sent my group to Cerini for service. I mentioned that the SL was rather convoluted for self servicing. He mentioned that Olympic is working on fabricating a tool for this purpose.

Joel

Hmm. A custom tool would make a big difference to me. I always liked the idea of owning a spring lever- I suspect they need piston cleaning a bit less frequently than the manual lever bc there is no water above the piston (please disabuse me of this notion if I'm wrong).

1. In 98% of the rebuilds I've seen on this site involving spring levers, the springs are rusted. I know that lots and lots of springs are made using stainless steel. Does someone know why stainless springs aren't used on espresso machines?

2. Orphan Espresso made a simple tool for compressing seals when inserting a Cremina piston. It's no longer available from them, but it's vaguely similar to this automotive tool: https://www.summitracing.com/search/par ... ompressors. I've used it on several Creminas and it makes reassembly trivial. Seems like something like this could easily be made in a home shop by someone using a lathe.

wsfarrell wrote:1. In 98% of the rebuilds I've seen on this site involving spring levers, the springs are rusted.

I've noticed this too. But I believe the Lapera lever and maybe even the ACS Evo leva have stainless springs. It seems like a critical component to make stainless.

baldheadracing wrote:Similar tools are available at https://www.naked-portafilter.com/produ ... na-pavoni/ or https://coffee-sensor.com/product/la-pa ... mina-also/

I'm trying to figure out how these piston insertion tools work.....from the photos it isn't obvious to me.

So the ring fits just inside the group head and guides the piston plus seals into the sleeve thereby avoiding tearing the middle seal. I wonder what this fabricated tool for the SL will look like...... will it include some sort of clamp for compressing the spring? Or just something like this ring for aligning the piston + seals.

Thanks for the link. Something like this would be perfect. Only issue I foresee is the requirement to remove the shower screen. On both Creminas this usually means trashing your group gasket. But I can live with that if it means having a way to safely service the group at home. In another thread, I mentioned having Purolator lose my SL group after shipping it to my vendor for a repair when my first attempt at servicing the group went wrong.........