l8nightCaffeine Senior Member Joined: 29 Nov 2011 Posts: 52 Location: Kalamazoo,MI Expertise: I love coffee
Posted Sun Mar 25, 2012, 10:12pm Subject: Re: Wega EVD restoration
The water softener plumbed in directly under the sink...saw no reason to keep it near the pump and it was easier to hide here.
(I used a T fitting off the fitting that went to our kitchen sink so that nothing had to be cut, or a clamp placed on it, that my landlord may not appreciate)
l8nightCaffeine Senior Member Joined: 29 Nov 2011 Posts: 52 Location: Kalamazoo,MI Expertise: I love coffee
Posted Sun Mar 25, 2012, 10:13pm Subject: Re: Wega EVD restoration
I than ran 3/8in tubing using compression fittings on each side from the water softener to the espresso machine, with some mildly creative techniques to make it look reasonable and where the cat cannot put a claw into it.
l8nightCaffeine Senior Member Joined: 29 Nov 2011 Posts: 52 Location: Kalamazoo,MI Expertise: I love coffee
Posted Sun Mar 25, 2012, 10:23pm Subject: Re: Wega EVD restoration
connecting to the pump i bought from ebay and finally to the espresso machine.
Is it just me or is this an oddly long procon pump?, It works fine it just looks funny to me.
Once this was all connected and mostly leak free I tried powering it up. It heated up much quicker than I had expected and although the gauge looks pretty bad and will be replaced (or some how cleaned up and re-mounted) it seemed to work. I did however turn it off at just over 1 bar because I was having steam leaking out of another dozen locations. One of the worst was the glass level gauge, attempting to be careful I tried to tighten this further...unfortunately I was not careful enough (or I should have simply replaced it to begin with as the rubber seals were clearly dried out). Either way I am now waiting on my second parts order to repair the level gauge and try to fix the remaining leaks.
I do have to ask. Why does everyone advice against Teflon tape?? i find that most of the brass to brass threaded connections are leaking and require Teflon tape to stop. I am now going back through all these leaks and simply adding Teflon tape, which is a tedious process.
I do have to ask. Why does everyone advice against Teflon tape?? i find that most of the brass to brass threaded connections are leaking and require Teflon tape to stop. I am now going back through all these leaks and simply adding Teflon tape, which is a tedious process.
The reason you dont use teflon tape is that these are compression fittings. The threads only hold the inner flange tightly against the connection and do not seal it.
If these connections are leaking then they're either too loose or there is another problem.
You can tighten them more after the machine has been warmed too.
Nope, the compression fittings are all doing ok, or like you said only take a little tightening.
However connections such as the HX. (in this machine the HX tubes are part of the boiler, and there are "end caps" which then connect to a copper pipe.) These kind of connections where it is just threading on each side are leaking. Another example is the brass connection into a flow meter where there is only thread.
With the flow meter, it is not truly brass to brass, but instead aluminum or stainless steel? to brass threading. Both of these locations gave me lots of trouble as there were no o-rings or any type of sealing, until I added Teflon tape.
The HX may not have needed Teflon if brand new "round copper washers" were used. I am guessing they flatten to create a better seal, I ordered a new set of them when i ordered a new level sight glass to see if that would avoid the large amount of Teflon tape required for a tight seal, at the right angle.
So i got all the major leaks fixed. It still hisses out of two locations. What i understand to be the vacuum-breaker or Anti-depression valve, and where one of the steam wands connects to the boiler. The steam wand is a simple fix, just poor angles now that everything is back in the frame.
Unfortunately the vacuum-breaker was not so easy, i am not sure if it was a result of over tightening, or tightening when hot and the different metals causing issues. Either way the threading got stripped pretty badly, I was able to extract it with unscrewing while pulling with vice grips. Luckily the fixture was ?half-height? meaning that it only used half the threading on the boiler, so that it only destroyed half the threading.
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