I decided the ease-of-periodic maintenance improvements of the R2 combined with my roasting volume justified replacing my old R1. My new R2 just came, and now that it’s seasoned and roasting again, today was the time to clean up good old serial number 76 in preparation for a new home.
Four hours later, she’s looking great, more inside than out, but that’s where it matters. I completely disassembled the rear and used boiling water to soften the 5cm-thick baked on coffee oil that has accumulated over the last 1,000 or so roasts, and scraped it with a hard-plastic scraper (a “lil chizler”). Once I could see metal underneath, used a pretty strong espresso cleaner solution to get the rest off. I soaked the blower fan in hot water with espresso cleaner, then used a tooth brush on the blades, and got most of the gunk off. Delightfully, it all re-assembled and worked fine the first time, with no screws left over.
The only other thing I had to do to get it back to basically “as new” condition was to replace the IBTS cooling fan, which had started to fail about a year ago. It wouldn’t spin up when I plugged in the roaster, so I learned that I could get it going by pointing a hot air blower at the vents near it, and in about 20 seconds it would get going. As I was gathering parts, I saw that I somehow had a spare brand new fan.
A couple photos:
This all took less than half a day - I should have done it sooner: it really does feel new again. (But I’m still super-excited about the R2 - it’s so easy to clean the IBTS, etc.)
For anyone curious about its history - I’ve had it since July 2016. I’m very thankful that Jonas and the folks at Aillio have made it possible for me to track the various updates to the R1 – I upgraded to the IBTS, a tryer and the v2 induction board. You can see from the photos, I’m thinking of swapping the dump-door handles - giving the R1 the R2’s handle and vice-versa. To give me something to remember the roaster that has taught me so much and given me so much great coffee.