Almost back together, and I broke something!

[mswanson]

I finally got my pre-infusion programmed board back, descaled the boiler, replaced the gaskets, and I accidentally broke the wire that goes to the group boiler's temp sensor (at least that's what I believe it is. Thinking I could take off the tube from the boiler cap using an allen wrench, the threads were so stuck I ended up breaking the copper tube that holds this sensor too!

So, i guess I'll have to order that temp sensor and then wire it back together.

This totally sucks. I've been without espresso for over 2 weeks now! Anyone do something this stupid before?

[JohnB]

2 weeks! Thats tough, hopefully you have a vac pot or some other method of producing excellent brew. Are you taking about the wire that goes into the cover just above the heating element connections? The one with the glob of silcone sealer on it?

[mswanson]

Yes, exactly. I called CC to order and it's the temp sensor and the senor just slides into the tube.

Looking on CC's site: http://www.chriscoffee.com/products/home/repairparts/s1coffeetempsensor

I'm not sure which wire will go to where on the sensor's wires. I have a black and a brown colored wire. Hopefully I just can connect each color together with a female-female solderless connector and be back in business.

I have a vac pot and home roast, so at least I'm having some good coffee, but obviously going from years of espresso to vac pot without choice is harsh :)

[JohnB]

You can run a continuitiy check to see which wires are ground but it may not matter. What about the copper tube you broke off? Do you need to replace the entire lid? I'm a big fan of Cloth filtered vac pot brew so I wouldn't consider it too harsh.

[mswanson]

If you look at your heating element on the group, next to the heating element is a copper tube which contains the temp sensor. It is screwed into the boiler "cap" via an allen headed screw.

When I snapped off the wire accidentally, I was going to try and take the copper tube off and then see if i could somehow reattach the wire to the temp sensor. In removing it, i snapped the tube off.

I'm not even sure if I could of gotten the temp sensor back out of the protective tube...

if you're not sure what I'm talking about, I can easily take a picture of it and post it.

ps. Only have joking about the harsh part, it's the "no choice in the matter" part which sucks...

[JohnB]

No big deal, my Vivaldi has a new home, I was just curious.