thusband After removing the shaft from the nut there was this piece of metal in the threads of the pin shaft (see photo). The threads were stripped from the nut.
I admit I haven’t been diligent about lubricating. Would that have prevented this?
Why is there a large spring included in the flow valve kit from Bella Barista?
That’s a shame, looks like the steel pin has removed the thread from the inside of the nut. I think lubrication is always a good thing and perhaps lubricating the thread would have helped prevent this, I’ve tried really hard to encourage people to lubricate these systems regularily (ECM or Lelit version)…or perhaps it was a defective thread from the start, however, if that were the case, it would have felt stiff from day one!
I’m assuming it’s been getting stiffer and stiffer for quite a while now…that wouldn’t happen overnight.
I wondered about a short steel helicoil for a fix, but I don’t know what type of thread the pin is (not sure you could get a helicoil like that)….You would have to try the pin in an actual helicoil to see. If it fitted, it would require drilling to just the depth of the thread and no further, unfortunately helicoils require drilling slightly past where they install, and the cross piece broken out. It would also require a helicoil of the right length.
The large spring in the kit is for replacement of the preinfusion spring (with a 11+ bar and not 4 bar version), after the vent spring of an E61 group has been removed. This prevent s the preinfusion chamber from opening at 4 bar and interfering with the profile, but allows the group to be vented. You only need this if you are adding the flow kit to a machine that doesn’t have one and has a manual E61 group.. e.g. when I fitted it to the Minima, I didn’t need to use it.
It’s irritating, because you only really need that nut, Lelit almost certainly buy it in fully assembled..
