Good Progress Today on the Microcimbali Restoration



There he is, sitting pretty on my countertop! These are the results of new chrome and powder coating, new gaskets and seals and lots of work inside. If he fires up okay and doesn't immediately spring a boiler leak or something, I'll polish the old aluminum and brass parts and let him live here for awhile. When I reassembled Mr. Cimbali today I found he was a bit high maintenance, or more like my bench technique is wanting.

"Where did I put that little screw?" "Oh, so now I see I need to screw the base on first, then attach the switches." And, "How do you crimp an old strain protector anyway?"

This is also my first fully rebuilt machine in progress. Now I can also see why even experienced folks expect there to be a step where they put water in, find a few leaks, fix them, then turn it on, see if it leaks again, tighten things up, and so on. Sure enough, attaching the sight glass and its seals is tricky. Too tight and the gaskets wander and it leaks. So what's tight enough? I hope I've found the happy medium.

Also, all the electrical work is still good so far, at least from what I can see by putting a multimeter to the blades of the new power cord. Tomorrow I hope to power it up (carefully, connected to a GFI, wearing rubber gloves and not standing in water). I'll report back.

Yippee!!! After seeing it in pieces last month at the HB get together, I'm crazy happy to see this sweet thang on your counter looking all bad ass and stuff. I have some Anchor Hocking Jadeite restaurant ware cups (thick 5 oz) that would go like rice on roni with your Liberty.
OO

A fine job Doc.

And it works.



I just finished pulling a recommissioning shot of Redbird's Black Jaguar espresso on this new denizen in my kitchen. It took about 15 minutes to come up to temperature using the 300W element. Then I turned on the steam element, waited about 90 seconds and had abundant steam.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeehaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!



He even tooted a little steam out the pressure relief valve on top. The shot almost choked Mr. Cimbali as the grind is dialed in for Lady Duchessa. And it's interesting that the spring on this machine doesn't allow adding extra pressure but just sets itself in motion and goes. When I pushed up on the lever it just moved free. That must be a safety feature to keep a clumsy user from tipping him over backwards.

Mr. Cimbali didn't shock me either. I took precautions, testing both elements and switches with the multimeter first. He was plugged into a ground fault outlet. I swear I was actually wearing rubber gloves.

BTW here's a belated question. I tested for voltage on the boiler surface and didn't get any but am not sure how one goes about using a muiltimeter to test for a shock hazard. I'm assuming it's okay because the ground fault didn't get set off.

Earlier today I went hunting for a few extra parts. The pre-test for leaks yesterday was allowing some water to drip through the shower screen so I went out and got tiny washers to bring it up snug and seal in the small rubber disk in the middle of the shower screen.

So I filled him with water and at first there were no leaks. As he heated up, some drips started coming off the screws of the shower screen and then through the shower screen itself and its edge. I did tighten up the shower screen screws on their lock washers, and the drips continued. But as the heating continued, the drips slowed to almost nothing. It seems as if some seals were seating themselves. I also had slathered the inside of the cylinder and the outside of the piston with Dow 111 that may have been settling into place.

I also picked up another, shorter power cord with a rubber gasket that will help serve as a strain relief. I've yet to attach the instruction label on the front and got the tiny screws and nuts for that.

But I'm a happy camper.

Buon caffe!

This just looks amazing! It brings to mind when I was a young teenager growing up down in LA, the LA County Museum of Art held a minor exhibit where an artesian had carefully and skillfully disassembled very solid high quality common household appliances and restored them to their former glory. All the way down to the woven cloth wrapped power cords and heavy brass and chrome. I swear to God that those items will last another several generations.

I hope to see these in video or in person some day. They look so cool!

that is lovely gary. i am in the middle or a restore of a same earlier microcimbali (with no plate above the group piston so it all has to come out from under - ridiculous....)
this gives me hope! and your finishing is great - nicely done!!!
cheers for spurring me on....

Hi Albert,

When you finish up, don't tighten the nuts too much on the top cap that bolts the lever assembly to the machine. I just found out the hard way by cracking mine. It's this part.



aka 440-082-105 in the parts diagram that's posted at OE:

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=htt ... Q&dur=1238

Not too despairing, though, as I've located the part and if worst comes to worst there are two options: La Cimbali still makes the Liberty model where this part would be interchangeable; and according to RayJohns aluminum can be TIG welded.

drgary wrote: Not too despairing, though, as I've located the part and if worst comes to worst there are two options: La Cimbali still makes the Liberty model where this part would be interchangeable; and according to RayJohns aluminum can be TIG welded.

Ouch.

That sucks.

Nothing is more sickening than over tightening something and hearing a pop or a crack. We've all paid our dues thought (when it comes to learning how to work on stuff and not over tighten, etc.).

I just saw one of these machines on ebay. They are pretty nice looking little machines!

As far as fixing that part: you might be able to have it TIG welded. It depends on if it's pot metal or aluminum or what. You might also research casting your own small metal parts. That's something I've been thinking about getting into. There have been more than a few times when having the ability to cast something would be really handy.

You might also be able to JB Weld that part and have some pretty good success. I just repaired the switch on my toaster using JB Weld and it's holding up fine (the Dualit toasters have a bad habit of arcing their timer switches to death after a while).

JB Weld is a glue you can buy at most hardware stores. It's basically sort of like a two part liquid steel epoxy. I've used it for all sorts of things. It's so strong that you can actually machine it like metal once it's dry. I used it once to hold a stud into a cylinder head on a race motor. It's pretty amazing stuff and can withstand very high heat as well.

Ray

Thanks, Ray. The OP of this thread is parting out his machine and just sent me that part, which I'll clean up and install. If for some reason it doesn't work, I've got some JB Weld on hand and will give it a try.

That's a lucky "break" for sure then

Looking forward to seeing the machine when it's done. I actually ran across a microcimbali the other day (on ebay or google or something) and thought it was a really cool looking little espresso machine. I hadn't put two and two together that this was the machine you were re-wiring.

Ray