This fall I refurbed by Cremina 67 thanks to Steve's epic refurb posting a couple of years ago. This series of posts is an attempt to provide a little payback to the HB and LMWDP folks, who made the process so much easier by contributing to that thread.

And, I have to admit, it is the most fun I have had in a long time. I am itching to get another machine apart and have a go at a rebuild. So, a couple of weeks ago I rescued a Riviera from the nether regions of ebay and made some plans.

I found out that these Rivieras come up now and then on ebay -- I've seen maybe six go by in a month or two of watching, and so I supposed there may be some folks out there who need to re-build every now and then, and maybe this would come in handy. I know orphanespresso offers a rebuild service, so there is always someone to go to if I take this one way off the rails.

But enough with the throat-clearing. Ahead to the refurb. When I got the machine out of the packaging (it came from a friendly e-bayer in Denver who was reasonable with the shipping), this is what we were facing.




Can't judge a book by its cover, although there has clearly been a leak somewhere, you can see the oxidization patterns around the back of the boiler casing. I was also struck immediately by the size of the portafilter -- it looks relatively small, although I am so new to these machines I'm not sure if that is significant. I'll get to those kinds of worries at the end of the rebuild. However, the handles were in good shape and there were no obvious flaws in the portafilter or basket.

The casing had a slight dent on one side where the power cord enters the casing -- I don't have a show of that handy, but it seemed that I could make a decent job of straightening it when I had it disassembled.

So with that cursory overview of the look of the machine I got straight to popping the casing so I can see what's going on underneath. Here's what I saw, a pleasant surprise and a couple of odd items.



I don't know if you can see it but the pressurestat looks much newer than the rest of the machine. Looks like someone has been under the hood here doing a little fixing up, maybe to keep this machine in some kind of working order, or to sell it. I will ask the seller if she knows the history. When I get the pressurestat out I'll post some pictures of it, I'm not even sure if it is a Riviera part, likely not, I'd think.

I can also see that I'm going to need a special tool for this boiler -- it looks screwed together right now with a very large nut fixed to a threaded segment of the lower boiler, and the heating unit screwed into the same segment. I can't tell yet. I'll check out some other sites with rebuild information on these boilers.



So, before I wander off to do that, some basic pics of the set-up of the machine. From the top, this one.



And a close-up of the pressurestat.



I'll post some of the next take-down steps next. Meanwhile, I'm gonna go off and order a complete set of gaskets from Orphanespresso. They may have a boiler tool there as well.

Thanks for the info on the pstat Doug. Useful to know. Are those parts still being made? I assume so -- it is much better condition than the rest of the parts underneath the hood. I got a lot of the take-down done last night and I'll post the process soon.

That safety valve looks a lot like the one in my PVL:

Thanks for the correction, I edited the posting.

(it's almost 4 am here, time to get some sleep... )

Back to the Riviera refurb. After the inspection yesterday I started to take the machine apart and take stock of the parts I was going to need. For starters, I ordered a full set of gaskets and seals from Doug at orphanespresso, figuring I was going to need most or all of them, and the cost is pretty reasonable.

So, first thing was to disassemble the steam wand assembly, which sticks out at an awkward angle and makes it more difficult to manipulate the machine. The assembly looks pretty standard. Here is a pic of the wand and the nuts that fix it into the steam wand valve.



The two main gaskets to replace here are a rubber o-ring about the centre of the valve and another round gasket about a centimetre across and 75 mm deep that is fixed into the end of the valve with a screw. These measurements are just estimates, I'll get the right ones up when I order the parts. This value abuts the part of the valve assembly leading into the boiler. They look like pretty standard parts.

Next, I decided to strip off some of the other parts outside the boiler, so I took off the pressure gauge. This gauge looks like it may have been damaged, the face plate is bent on the outer edge such that the needly could probably not pass 90 degrees (less than one bar on the meter), so the gauge itself could be toast. Sorry for the bad focus on the pics, I'm using my camera phone while holding parts, but they should give you an idea.

I managed to disassemble the gauge itself (I'll post some pics next time) and found that the mechanism itself is fixed to the casing with two screws on the back. The front plastic cover is held on by a metal ring that snaps onto the casing. With a little lubricant and some careful use of an exacto knife, you can slip the front metal ring off, remove the plastic face plate, remove the brass bolt holding the casing on the bottom, and slip the gauge itself out of the casing, being careful not to put pressure on the mechanics of the gauge itself. When I post some pics it will make clear the elements of the gauge, it has an elegant little mechanism. But I turned to fixing the gauge once I had the rest of the machine stripped.



I then removed the pressure relief valve from the top, which was stuck on pretty well. I then removed the sight glass, brass casing and bolts, and gaskets for same from the side of the boiler assembly. To work the sight glass out, you need to remove the steam gauge, remove the seals under it, and in my case they were solid as a rock, and then unscrew the to and bottom bolts of the brass casing around sight glass piping. Once those are unscrewed, there is some give in the sight glass up and down, and you can shimmy it up through the opening the steam gauge normally sits in. Then you can clean out the gaskets and detritus.

Mine were not in good shape, and the sight glass had a long crack at the top which had been hidden by the metal casing and bolts. So, new sight glass from orphan espresso coming up. The gaskets are important here, because there are actually four to be aware of, two in the bottom of the sight glass casing and two in the top. The way they work is that one is smaller and flatter and lies in the bottom of the sight glass assembly, and on top of it lies the fatter gasket. When the sight glass is pressed into the fatter gasket, it eventually hits the bottom seal. These gaskets, when pressed down by the brass bolt holding the brass casing, push down on the fatter gasket, forcing it to pinch the sight glass and push out to the outer casing. This effectively holds the glass when compressed. Together, it seems that they form a base-and-sides for the glass tube when inserted, so that no part of the glass tube touches the metal.

The same assembly is used for the top of the sight glass, but upside down, if you see what I mean.

In addition, the top of the sight glass assembly (the part sitting under the pressure gauge, but atop of the sight glass) has another gasket inserted from the top that sits between the top of the metal assembly and the bottom of the pressure gauge. This one was fully ossified in my machine, and had to be chipped out with a pick and needle-nose pliers. Be careful when doing this, I'm not totally sure it was not my chipping (with a dental pick) that didn't crack the sight glass itself.

As an aside, rather than actual needle-nose pliers, I actually use medical forceps and clamps, as well as dental pics and instruments for prying into difficult holes. I'll try to post some pics of these next time. I used to help out a small group of doctors sending these instruments to developing countries, where this kind of equipment is expensive, but is just tossed out here. Amazing waste, actually. But you can actually get these pretty easily, because hospitals actually toss these out. If you know someone working there, you can have them set a few aside (washed, of course) and you can bleach and auto-clave/steam them at home just to be super-cautious. They work like magic, sort of a cross between clamps, pliers and tweezers, and can get into the most cramped spaces and delicately pull out rubber or t-tape or whatever it is that you need to operate on.

So, with the sight glass off, the top pressure value off, the steam gauge off, the steam wand off, the next step was to get the group head off to make it easier to set the machine on its side and get underneath it. The group held is held by four nuts which came off pretty easily. The group itself did not though, and the flat gasket seemed to have fused it pretty well. I have to resist the temptation to just grab a flathead and start prying, so I gave it a quick soak with lubricant and make a cup of coffee. By the time I get back, I'm in the mood to just work it gently back and forth until the seal gives a little, and it pops off. Here's what was underneath.



Looks like the seal worked well and you can see the brass underneath, a glimmer of hope.

The group itself was in pretty good shape too. The intake pipe is, as you would expect, pretty caked.



But the disassembly of the group is a little tricky. In my case, the dispersion screen came off easily, so I could avoid damaging it. My Riviera has a spring loaded piston, and there is pretty decent force behind the spring. To get the piston out, you have to pop the c-clips, and then find a way to apply some pressure to the piston in the group head without damaging it. In my case, a short fat piece of dowel wrapped in a cloth on the workbench, while I pushed down on the grouphead did the trick. It gave enough slack in the lever so that I could use a small rubber mallet to tap out the pins holding the lever to the top of the group.

Here is a pic of the group bottom before the piston gets popped out.



Once the pins were out, the spring pops the piston down out the group and it is pretty straightforward to disassemble. The surprising thing about this piston assembly is that there only three gaskets on the piston itself, no gasket on the shaft leading through the group.





The spring and other parts in the piston assembly look like this.



And the inside of the group with the piston out look like this.



All in all, the assembly is in pretty good shape, but it has some serious grunge on it, and the inside of the group is scaled up. I'm not certain how I'm going to clean that out yet. First a good wash in soap and water and then metal polish, probably. There is so much brass here to clean through it'll probably be worth investigating some brass cleaning options.

I also noticed something interesting about the lip of the cylinder in the group. It has a slightly flared edge on the side nearest the machine itself, on the bottom/leftish side of the picture above. At first I thought the group was tampered with, someone trying to squeeze the dispersion screen or something, but it looks symmetrical enough to be part of the design. I'm not sure why that flare is there, but I'll ask around.

You can also see that the top of the group does not have a gasket or seal for the piston rod. Simple but needs lubricating.

The gaskets themselves look in rough shape, but I'll turn to cleaning the group and piston at the next stage, and do a little more research into the way this group mechanism works and how it relates to pulling a decent shot.

Last task before stopping to take stock and order parts, etc., is to get underneath this puppy and get at the wiring and boiler. Learning from past mistakes, I decided this time to do the full effort to get the wiring photographed, marked and diagrammed. I have created a wiring diagram for this scheme (picture below) if anyone wants it, I'll photograph it or write it out for you. It's not hard at all when you have a diagram, and it's a nightmare when you don't.



With the diagram in place, I took the wiring out and began to detach the piping underneath the boiler. Stripped of wiring, it is a lot simpler to work with.

So the pipe connecting the boiler to the pressure stat unscrews fairly easily. The pipe connecting the boiler to the external water source is a little more complex. Advice around the inter-tubes on Rivieras is that this water feed should not be used if possible. The assembly is interesting, and this one was a bit tricky to take apart. When it finally did, out came some pretty stale and milky-looking water. But you can see that there is a cap over a spring that fits on to the intake assembly. On the other side of the assembly, where it comes out the top of the casing (just to the right of the boiler as you look at it from the top) is a button over a brass fitting which presumably opens and closes this water input. Mine doesn't seem to have any action to it at all, so I'm not quite sure how this on/off system works. when I clean and re-assemble, it may be clearer how the mechanism works. In this case, this machine will go to a friend as a present for sending me to Italy on his airmile points, and he will likely not use this feed, so I may work it to close it only. Although, no, the purist in me suggests I get the bloody thing working and let him decide. Anyway, for now, here is the way the assembly looks, and aside from seals and gaskets, I don't think I'll need any new parts, if I can only figure out how it works.







And, that's about it for now. The next steps in this rebuild are to get the boiler tool from orphanespresso or a local hardware store, and source some of the gaskets that don't come in the complete gasket set from Doug.

There is also quite a bit of brass to begin polishing up, and a dent in the casing to hammer out. If anyone has brass polish advice, now's the time, because I'm facing a lot of evenings watching football with some piece of this machine and greasy hands.

I'm also gonna take a run at the pressure gauge and see what can be done about it, although I'm pretty wary of using it again. I'm going to see if there are ways I can test it. Lastly, because I'll soon be in a waiting phase, I may turn to pimping it up just a little with new lever and porta-filter handles. There seems to be quite a following on LMDWPers into the custom wood handles, and who am I to buck that trend. Particularly appealing to me are the Gaggia ribbed handles on some of their machines, which look like they could be turned without excessive difficulty. Suggestions for sourcing those would be really appreciated too.

orphanespresso wrote:It has the original style pstat, and what a nice view of the wiring layout...always good to have a reference as there are generally a lot of creative wiring of these things. Different portafilters were used and this one is one of the variants, seems to have something to do with the brass finish models. Is there any mention anywhere of Faema New York, as we have one identical to yours, with that type of portafilter. I was admiring the seemingly perfectly intact label on the boiler cap, quite rare that touch. A little elbow grease and you're there! Nicely grungy looking project....lots of potential.

Thanks Doug, and thanks for the prompt reply with parts. No mention in the machine of faema ny, not even a serial number that I could identify. Where to look for specifying marks?

IR wrote

(it's almost 4 am here, time to get some sleep... )

I see you're suffering from PV fever. Symptoms include sore arm (too many lever pulls), noticeable limp (as the kroners leave the wallet for more coffee beans), and insomnia (too much caffeine).

PC