LR Steam Valve Sticky

Yaseen Aziz

Reiss,

As mentioned in my other thread, the steam valve appears to be sticking. It doesn't easily toggle back to center and gets stuck halfway back and sticks when moved slightly in any direction (below video shows better than I can explain). I compared with the hot water toggle which is acting as expected

Reiss Gunson

hi yaseen, yes, I've seen it before many times and my answer is the same; use it, lots and lots. it will come smooth

the only way we could avoid this is instead of machining the bush and face that it runs on we would need to pay quite a lot more to have them ground

the solution is simply to use it and the tooling grooves will be worn away. in the interim you can smooth its operation by take off the chrome end cap carefully so as not to mark the chrome (26mm wrench) and apply some loxeal no.4 grease to the running surfaces

kind regards

reiss.

Yaseen Aziz

Reiss, sounds good, i'll do that.

There is quite a bit of grease on the outer surface of the ball joint, so i'll leave it for now and just use and enjoy it.

Thanks for the input, really enjoying the LR so far

Reiss Gunson

yes, but i suspect it is mostly the edge of the truncated rear face of the ball end running on the machined face of the bush that sits in front of the plunger that is responsible

Yaseen Aziz

Got it. I'll take it apart tomorrow and add a dab of Loxeal. Will report back

Reiss Gunson

Yaseen Aziz

Reiss,

Thanks for the visual. I wrapped the chrome steam cap in electrical tape and took it off carefully, it was loaded with grease.
I also removed the hot water tap and ironically, that one had little to no grease.

The "stickiness" appears to be coming from the front of the ball as it contacts the sleeve inside the nut vs. rear contact point (which appears very smooth with no rough edges). As a test, I switched out pistons and got same behavior
When I rotate both off the machine, the hot water tap rotates smoothly while the steam tap grinds and binds (it feels like there is a rough edge catching as you rotate it, when I look inside with a flashlight it appears smooth - no visual edges/imperfections etc.)

Frans Goddijn

My Londinium machines (L1-Luxe first generation, L1-P professional which is now L1, and L-R) had a slight crunchiness in the toggles at first but my L1-P's toggles for instance are now satin smooth, just because it's been getting some good use.

The suggestion to just use the machine to make yourself a lot of excellent espresso is a good one.

Yaseen Aziz

Frans, thanks for the input. Sounds like I just need to buy more Londiniums

Frans Goddijn

I sold the Luxe but the other two are for keeps! ;-)

Reiss Gunson

my advice remains unchanged, it is not defective and with a bit of luck some owners in addition to frans that have had there machine for at least 3 months can pitch in and testify that their machine also had toggles that were not smooth when new, but have become so with use

Yaseen Aziz

Sounds good. Yes, that's the surface I was describing.
I'll continue cranking out the milk drinks for the wife and guests and report back once it's smoothed out and post a video (good record for others on the before and after).