Hi All,
I thought I would embark on giving my 6 year old Mechanika the once over due to sticky lever seals, a broken o-ring on the hot water wand lever piston and a leaky anti-vac valve.
After pulling all the group and wand bits apart I noticed that there was a nice collection of white scale particles in the hot water pipe. Given that I live in Melbourne and have soft water I thought that scale wouldn’t be an issue. I had descaled once before due to the capillary tube for the pressure gauge becoming blocked, but I probably could have just unblocked the tube and left the boiler alone.
Given that I was replacing the anti-vac valve and needed to clean up the thread I thought descaling would be an easy job……and then I pulled the cover off to discover the element seal had been leaking and has made a small mess of the chassis. Powder coated steel doesn’t withstand dripping hot water and there is a little bit of rust to clean up, but it will have to wait until I have more time off to completely disassemble the machine for a repaint.
I removed the boiler and the element. As expected the seal was hard and cracked and it’s Easter, so getting another seal was impossible. Wrapping Teflon tape around the seal saved the day, but is only a temporary fix.
While the boiler was out I soaked it in descaler with everything removed, except the Hx fittings. There was the tiniest amount of scale grit in the bottom of the boiler, but the outside of it was a mess from the leaking. It cleaned up beautifully…..so much so that the Hx fittings leaked when reassembled!
Thread sealer is great at the factory, but is a bugger to deal with when you are removing parts. I cleaned it all up and made Teflon tape washers for the Hx fitting and all is good now.
I have run into an issue with the brew valve sticking after the rebuild. The new seal is viton and seems to stick to the valve seat. I cleaned up the cam and replaced the pins so that isn’t the issue. A bit of Molycote fixed it, but I have never had this happen before - has anyone else come across this?
What I meant to ask before posting this is that the Molycote fix will only be temporary, so should I go back to a standard rubber seal?
