The old espresso machine that mocked me for 6 months

I bought a used La Marzocco Linea from a shop closing down in Portland, and it took me 6 months to figure out why the shots kept channeling. Replaced the basket, the tamper, even the burrs on my grinder, but it turned out the previous owner had installed a cheap replacement pump that surged pressure. Has anyone else chased a ghost like that and found the fix was something you never would have guessed?

2 comments

2 Comments

ryan_nelson27d ago

My buddy had a similar thing with his old Jeep. He kept chasing a rough idle for months, replaced plugs, coils, even the whole distributor. Turned out a tiny vacuum hose under the intake manifold had a crack you could only see if you bent it a certain way. He only found it by accident when he dropped a bolt and had to fish around down there, felt the little split with his finger. Cheap $4 hose and a 10 minute job, but it made him feel like an idiot for two whole seasons of garage time.

taylor8226d ago

Digging into your story reminds me of @ryan_nelson's Jeep vacuum hose thing, it's always the cheap part that makes you feel crazy. Same thing happened to me with a home roaster once, I swapped out the thermocouple, the drum motor, even rebuilt the chaff collector, but the roasts kept stalling. Turned out the bean hopper lid had a tiny rubber gasket that was letting cold air sneak in when it warmed up, and it only acted up after 10 minutes of run time. That gasket cost like 3 bucks at a hardware store, but I wasted a whole month thinking I forgot how to roast.