Taking apart a Gaggia

kencleary

Hey everyone,

After getting my beans from Intelligentsia delivered to the office very kindly by Reactor last week I decided to bring in an expresso machine to show people in the office what exactly the fuss is about good coffee. I had an old Gaggia Selecta Deluxe (a kind of rediuced version of the Classic) lying around unused since I upgraded a little while ago, so I stuffed it into a gym bag and away to work I went.

This probably wasn't the brighest option since the machine now refuses to work! I plug it in, it heats as normal for a while but at about 10 minutes it begins to make a sort of loud laboured wheezing and despite hitting the switch no water flows from the grouphead. Oddly the steam wand works normally, producing both steam and hot water on request. So at this point I'm thinking some kind of blockage just above the grouphead?

Anyway I'm going to dedicate my lunchtime to taking the machine apart, even if I can't figure out what's wrong well at least I can see how the things are put together. But if anyone has any suggestions or better yet any technical schematics for the machine I'd be very grateful!

Gran Hermano

kencleary wrote: »

Hey everyone,

After getting my beans from Intelligentsia delivered to the office very kindly by Reactor last week I decided to bring in an expresso machine to show people in the office what exactly the fuss is about good coffee. I had an old Gaggia Selecta Deluxe (a kind of rediuced version of the Classic) lying around unused since I upgraded a little while ago, so I stuffed it into a gym bag and away to work I went.

This probably wasn't the brighest option since the machine now refuses to work! I plug it in, it heats as normal for a while but at about 10 minutes it begins to make a sort of loud laboured wheezing and despite hitting the switch no water flows from the grouphead. Oddly the steam wand works normally, producing both steam and hot water on request. So at this point I'm thinking some kind of blockage just above the grouphead?

Anyway I'm going to dedicate my lunchtime to taking the machine apart, even if I can't figure out what's wrong well at least I can see how the things are put together. But if anyone has any suggestions or better yet any technical schematics for the machine I'd be very grateful!

Manual here

I know I've a bookmark for the schematics the various models somewhere.

If the machine wasn't used for a while it could need de-scaling.
The movement in transit could have loosened some of the built up
scale inside and blocked the flow to the group-head. I'd try a proper
descale before deconstruction.

kencleary

Thats a possibility alright Gran. The machine has stopped making that godawful racket and some water is coming through the grouphead, just at an extremely low rate. Its never been de-scaled so that might be contributing alright. Will any de-scaler do?

Gran Hermano

I pick up Puly descaler from Ristretto.

Here's the bookmark to the site I use for maintenance tips/schematics.

A lot of the Gaggia models have common internals.

Mr Magnolia or Reactor may be able to guide you through the internals
as I know they've both modded their Classics.

Mr Magnolia

Yeah, never really had a requirement to go to the group-head though, just the OPV and associated tubing. I don't think the Selecta Deluxe even has an OPV.

The As Gran Hermano says, try the de-scaler and let us know if that resolves it. Cheers for those links too Gran Hermano.

RE*AC*TOR

sounds like a scale issue to me alright. Then internals are ter simple on the classics, i imagine even more so on this machine.

kencleary

Cheers lads the de-scaling seems to have done the trick alright - though it was fun to open up the machine and start fiddling with valves etc

Mr Magnolia

Glad you got it sorted.