Dang, every now and then your hardware just plain old fails you, and you either need to replace it or rebuild it. It becomes urgent when it affects your caffeine delivery system, in my case a 3 year old la Pavoni EuroPiccola espresso system (a tad tempermental but capable of reaching great heights).
Dr. Pavoni to the rescue, with a very detailed site describing not only how to get great espresso out of the system, but how to maintain it and also how to do the annual gasket replacement. So, with $40 of replacement parts (and the Sanremo 2006 CD) from Forzano Italian Imports and a few hours of time, I set out to see if I had any mechanical skills remaining after 20 years behind the keyboard. Here’s what it looked like:
And, I managed to get it all put back together, without any extra screws, bolts, or parts lying around when I was done. The first coffee we made this morning with the rebuilt system was outstanding. And look how clean the machine looks!
p.s. as with all photos in this blog, you can click through to the original flickr image and look at larger sizes.