# Boiler bolts stuck



## Tag1260 (Jun 17, 2019)

Have a 2003 Classic on the way and the previous owner said he tried to get the boiler apart but was afraid to break the bolts. So, anyone have any tricks to loosen stuck boiler bolts on a Classic? Heat, penetrating oil, big hammer? Probably never been out.

Thanks


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## 2cups (May 6, 2019)

I've just been through this fun problem solving exercise with a 2004 machine.

Heat, penetrating oil, and extending allen keys with spanner (there's a video on YouTube) got me there on 3 out of 4 of the bolts.

I ended up rounding the head of the last bolt (whoops). Was left with no choice but to cut the head off with a Dremel (tricky). Then with more penetrating oil, and lots of persuasion with a screwdriver/hammer I managed to prise the two halves apart. Turned out that a mixture of scale/rust had acted to bond the shaft of the bolt to the boiler.

Good luck, hopefully yours won't be in as poor a state!


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## Kamtsa (Jun 18, 2019)

You probably have resolved this by now, but I find these boiler bolts seem to fully fuse to the boiler material, maybe it is the same material for original screws? I accept upfront to *ruin* *the* *screws *and replace them with generic non-Gaggia stainless steel ones (if you got soft brass ones) afterwards. Then I only have to *concentrate on preserving the thread in the lower boiler* half, to avoid tap&seat afterwards, that mind set makes working on it with brute force lot easier for me.

In addition to the above ideas [heat never worked for me, RustRemover/CLR and light hammering/rattling with nose pliers, or cutting screw head off and pushing upper half of boiler on top & grip remaining screw body with pliers if needed] I had good success with carefully hammering an old mini-screw driver or similar into side of screw and tap it both clock and anti-clock wise , in a bid to lose the initial fusing and help penetrating oil to get in. If I muster the patience to only spend a minute a day on a particularly nasty bolt it will eventually break free. Otherwise you can drill the screw out with a much smaller size drill - the original screws seem to be soft material - and scrape the remaining screw carefully out, again in order to preserve thread on boiler side. (Someone with tap&seat experience might use quick drill out, but I actually enjoy the removal process in some meditative way :/). Also, if you resort to hammer a flat screw driver either between boiler halves or between boiler and screw to break scaling, beware of the soft material. But it lead to leaking if you sand boiler faces flat before reassembling, but it looks of course ugly on the outside, if you care about that sort of thing on a daily-use Gaggia Classic.


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## Tag1260 (Jun 17, 2019)

Thanks for the ideas. I ended up just using brute force after soaking the entire group head and boiler flange over night in some citric acid. Two came easy but two were stuck not in the threads but in the boiler flange . I broke the two off the took pliers and the the remainder just threaded right out with no problem.


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## Tag1260 (Jun 17, 2019)

Has anyone used Never Seize on the bolts upon reassembly?


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