www.espresso-restorations.com The Espresso Machine Restoration site A non-commercial site for those interested in espresso equipment repair and restoration. |
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La Marzocco 1 Group Linea rebuild |
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Manufacturer: La Marzocco srl., Florence, Italy Model: Linea, 1 Group Semi-Automatic, 220V, Single Phase. 2600W Approx Date of Manuf: 1992 Date acquired: August 2004 Working condition: Yes, taken as working condition, all handles, trim and pump in place. Notes: A restaurant refugee. No water filter or water softener in place when found and most probably has been like that since installation. Extremely dirty and oily, a real challenge! |
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Basic condition This undisputed king of the espresso machine world was too good an opportunity to pass up. I had been nagging a restaurant group for ages to clear some of their stock of used and abused machines. A Nuova Simonelli was offered to me which quickly became a NS Mac, this Linea and a Cimbali super-auto. I knew that this machine was in working condition which was a good thing but if you are going to do a complete and utter restoration this does not really matter that much since all components would be stripped and overhauled. But still it is nice to know that everything is operational and almost all of it can be re-used. |
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Stripping down At this point I sort of had an idea of what was in store, this was one machine that had been neglected and never cleaned, ever! You can see the dirt on the pictures which was an oily and slimy and left a film on practically everything. One thing I cannot get accross was the smell, the machine had a very bad stale odour, it may have been the oil or it may have been the dead insects from inside, and there were many of them. One of the first jobs of any restoration is pest control. With the main panels off it was just time to start pulling it apart and dropping almost every nut, bolt, screw and component into a bucket ready for cleaning and descaling. I can pull apart and assemble Lineas in my sleep, but if it was any other machine you can be sure I would be taking mental notes as well as photos to make sure I knew where each part went to make assembly that bit easier. I don`t think that there is any real method to dismantling a machine, just work from the outside, usually the boilers are the last pieces to come out, once they are out the frame can come apart ready for cleaning. |
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A nasty surprise The brew boiler was in a bit of a mess as you can see above. Usually with LM machines the steam boiler is in a worse state in terms of crap and scale build-up. I attribute this to the fact that the water does not get replenished as often as the brew boiler and therefore sediment is allowed to settle. Now I usually expect the steam boiler to be a bit worse then the brew boiler but I have never seen anything like this.... |
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Dismantling complete Pulling the machine apart was not too long, about 1 hours including time for photos. I like getting this part over and done with because it is so grubby and dirty. The smell I cannot stress enough was awful. |
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This website is created by Paul Pratt, Hong Kong 2004. If you would like to use any of the images or text I am sure I will say yes, but please ask first! Email me here. |