Good day, the boiler of my Lelit Elizabeth has been leaking for a couple of weeks and decided to have a look since I have the time now. the water leaked between the lower boiler part and the machine casing. Visual inspection showed no leaks at the top connections, just very little water visible in front of the boiler when leaking was taking place. I decided it probably is the MC752/7 gasket, removed and disassembled the boiler using a Lelit Insider video. After opening up the boiler there was quite a bit of lime scale inside, although I always used a RO filter. There was white residue on the gasket at some places, nice red on other places, showing it did not make proper contact and caused the leak.
I need some advice on cleaning and reassembling if possible. I gently removed some of the scale off of the lower part, mechanically with a screw driver, but this also removed the coating at some places. Maybe not such a good idea. Cleaning of the contact surfaces of the lower part was easy, the upper part is more difficult, after some elbow grease cleaning with a plastic cleaning sponge and citric acid solution, there still is black residue that you can feel, not flat yet.
I probably need to descale it with a critic acid solution for a longer time, the boiler cleaning thread of the Mara X mentioned overnight soaking in a 50 gram / liter solution. I’m hesitating to do that, is that fine?
Ordering a replacement gasket ring is difficult, especially getting it on time for Christmas, and checked generic o-rings. There are some available that have the right size, but I doubt they are of the correct material, NBR or Viton. Viton has the proper temp range, NBR doesn’t and on top of that Viton is not recommended for water and steam.
Please advice.
Cheers, Bart.
