My Pavoni died, but I brought it back to life

When I got married, I bought my wife a diamond ring. She bought me a Pavoni. I got the better end of the deal, although she insists that because she gets labor-free espresso, she actually got the better end of the deal.

I pull 1-2 shots each day, almost religiously. For years the Pavoni worked great. The first parts that crapped out were the plastic nuts in the water sight tube. A quick call to Thomas E Cara, whom I met entirely by accident while wandering around San Francisco years before, helped solve the problem. Christopher Cara knew immediately what the problem was and shipped me some brass replacement nuts. Since then the Pavoni had no problems.

A few more years passed until my Pavoni hit the skids again. It started crapping out slowly at first. One day I could only pull one shot; any subsequent shot was dry. No water was coming out. The next day it would be fine. This went on until eventually I couldn't get anything out of the pull. The group head wasn't getting any water.

I took the group head apart and found my problem: the "Group to Boiler Insert", which should be a firm yet supple piece of rubber, had hardened into brittle plastic nastiness. When I went to screw the feed tube back into it, the threads got completely stripped (through no fault of my own). The fact that the makers of a $700 espresso machine saw fit to screw a brass pipe into a cheap piece of plastic that is routinely under 185 degree temperatures is somewhat alarming. Piss poor design if you ask me.

I thus attempted to remove the insert, but because it had become so brittle, it just got shredded. It wasn't coming out.

First I tried to bore my own holes to attempt to re-anchor the removal tool, but these holes too were shredded. Then I just started shredding the whole thing deliberately, piercing it with a drill, turning it into swiss cheese. After enough of that, I could finally chisel the thing out with a flathead screwdriver. Don't chisel it out with a chisel, and if you do chisel it out with a screwdriver, be extremely careful. One slip and you can shred the threads on the inside of the group, which will effectively destroy the entire group head.



Slowly slowly, very slowly, I chipped off all the pieces of the crusted insert. I didn't ding up the threads inside the group too much. Another call to Christopher Cara at Thomas E. Cara and the replacement parts went in the mail. A week later, I screwed the insert back into the group head and very, very carefully screwed the feed pipe back into the insert and voila, good espresso again. Christopher actually sent me two replacements with a hand written note telling me that the plastic threads strip really easily. It took me a good long time before I actually got the feed tube screwed in properly. Shame on Pavoni for not fabricating this piece in brass!