Inside Gerald's Silvia

This is why you should never trust anyone other than a trained / skilled barista with your precious espresso machine.  Gerald's housemate ran his Rancilio Silva dry and burned out the boiler and welded in heating element

So Gerald and I decided to pull it apart and get the boiler out so we could replace it ourselves - which we did - get the boiler out I mean. The replacement part is not so easy as worldwide demand for copper has meant that prices and parts are at a premium, and the boiler is on backorder.

Although, we did have a local distributor in Melbourne offer to replace the boiler for us at a cost that was almost equivalent to the purchase price of the machine - so we decided to do the job ourselves, now we're waiting on parts

All in all its been been a very worthwhile job pulling the machine apart, as I also now have an ageing Baby Gaggia, and a Eurolab all-in-one machine on my bench,waiting to be pulled apart, as I'm cannibalising the Eurolab to fix the Gaggia

Believe it or not you can actually but a Eurolab new for half the price of a replacement vibration pump for a machine

Wierd but true...