Hello!

I think i will insulate the boiler. Once it's cleaned it should be an easy job.

I noticed that i have two different solenoid nucleus. One with two springs inside och one with one spring.
The longer solenoid valve is attached to the brewgroup (follow'd by a drain pipe) and the shorter valve (blind) sits on the water inlet block.
Which nucleus goes in which solenoid?

Boiler clean inside out and insulated

Hi!

Now the Carimali is cleaned and put together again. I plugged it in an filled the boiler, but autofill didn't stop so it overfilled! I was angry for i while and started to investigate the cause for the overfill. I took out the level probe, sanded it and then sanded the ground wires. They where in a bad shape! Now autofill works.
I then did som tests on the autofill solenoid on the water lnlet box. With autofill ON I got 230V at the coil. With autofill OFF i could read about 26V att the coil! I was hoping for 0V. Is that a problem? Is i enough to open the plugger inside the solenoid?

/Simon

A few steps forward again.
I had by mistake connected one water pipe in the wrong outlet on the water box. That caused some problems.

I read the volts on the coil connection again and got 230v ON and 5v OFF. Much better!

I also swiched the autofill solenoid to an used Lucifer solenoid valve (a other project: Faema due) and it seems that the leak has stopped.

Now I am ready for a new start up. New sesls and o-rings for the water inlet box. iy seems that I have an older box, because the schmatic pictures that I found on all espresso sites look a bit different. The new version dont have a valve check ball.


I also ordered new solenoid valves (inlet and group). Impressed by the delivery from France to Finland: 48h!!!

Hi again!
I tought the Carimali was ready for a start up, but once again a problem came up. I got nice 1,5bar pressure and steam power is very good with the 3,5l boiler an 4 hole steam vand! But brewing was a disapointment, only 4 bar! I inspected the pump and recognised 2 problems. The bypass was broken and the shaft didnt turn. I will repair the bypass with a Lego brick and get a replacement bearing. This is an original pump from 1988, so the bearing was hard to get my hands on. The inner diameter was 11.088mm, when todays standard models are 10 or 12mm, but not 11mm. But a dealer in Estonia got one so I hope i can buy one there.


I will drill a small 1mm hole in the Lego brick so it will attach to the spring inside the bypass and seal the bypass tube!

Bypass repaired

Next problem. The pump only reached 6bar. I did a test with a an other pump (200l/h) and that one pressed the pressure gauge up to 10bar. I took my pump apart again and found this.

3/4 wings dont make contact to the outer ring. The backside of the wings have small holes. But some strong 2-base epoxy glue and sandpaper will do the job I hope. Hoping to get an even and 0.5mm thicker backside so that the wing will seal to the outer ring.

....and I have a functional espresso machine!!! The Carimali Uno P -88 has woke up from the dead!
With some epoxy glue and a bit of sanding, I fitted the wings into the pump and now all wings seal to the outer ring. I could adjust the pressure to just over 9bar and the water flow got much better when inlet mains pressure cant go between the wings and outer ring. With the pump leaking I hade about 1.3l/60sek out of the group and thas seems alot.
I will post some pics later on when I have the painted side panels on!

Looking forward to see the end result, I would love to see a video too if possible