I posted this at the ‘other’ forum, but in the spirit of building useful info for this forum I thought I’d recreate it here.
The flat shower screen mod is fairly common for Rancilio Silvia’s, but not easy to get in the UK. I decided to do the mod myself (on my v6) and thought I’d share how in case it’s useful for others.
Things you need (I have no link to these ebay sellers, I’m sharing as these are who I got my parts from).
- M5×14mm stainless steel countersink screw (I used A4 grade), e.g. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/292281595050
- 12mm countersink bit suitable for metal. The screw head is 10mm but the slightly larger bit leaves room for the shower screen to be pulled in leaving a completely flat screen. e.g. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/152843849032
What to do:
- Take your previous screen and jet breaker out. I used the original pieces. If anything went wrong replacements can easily be bought online (e.g. www.theespressoshop.co.uk)
- Clamp your jet breaker (a vice is best, but mole grips would probably also work) and countersink with a drill and the 12mm countersink bit until the screw sits flush. Use some lubricant (e.g. WD40) and take plenty of breaks to prevent the metal getting too hot. Best practice is to drill slowly with lots of pressure. In this case the bits weren’t amazing, so I did short blasts at high speed and then added more wd40 and let it cool. This worked well enough.
- Clean up the jet breaker so that it’s smooth. I gave a quick polish with a file and some wet and dry sandpaper to make sure there weren’t any burrs.
- Assemble the screw, shower screen and jet breaker. Put an m5 nut on the screw and tighten until flat. This deforms the shower screen into the countersunk jet breaker. Do not do this by tightening into the machine in case you damage the threads in the group head.
- Remove the nut, give everything a good clean and then fit it back to your machine
I’m not convinced this has any impact on flavour our channeling, but it removes one potential cause and makes cleaning and checking the headspace above your coffee easier.
Enjoy not having a big screw dent in the top of your pucks.
