I picked this neat machine up a few weeks ago. I am not under any time lines but have been working on it for at least a few minutes each day. I am amazed at how much of a tank this thing is. I am not aiming at making it look new. Just clean it up as much as I can and get it back together with new seals, new elements... and see how it works.

It doesn't have the frame badge so I am unsure what model it is. 75? I was told it was made in 1974. The prior owners had it in service in cafes in 3 different states. They also did most of the repairs.

Here is the boiler badge:

The lion!:


Logo and lion:


Before working on tear down:


Boiler badge (not sure what this means):


LA SAN MARCO SPA
COLL . GO N.F
0000 37509
P.E.2BAR.GO 83

Unshielded front view:


Boiler all hooked up:


Left vapore:


Right vapore:


Acqua:


Cup warmer valve (?):


Cup warmer steamer (?- this was capped off with a blind cap- wanting to restore):


Sight glass (highly modified):


Sirai and Gicar (last owners modded the machine with a autofill):


Water level sensor (mod):


Almost stripped down boiler:


Back of group head:


Back of head with valve removed:


Barings:


Neat needle baring:


Barings out:


Cool condensation collector from the cup warming tray:


Front nearly stripped down:


Elements (guessing that the oven trick wont work):


Inside boiler (not bad at all):


Everything came apart without much trouble. The boiler gasket was perhaps the worst and most time consuming. I had to whittle the rope/glue/scale out. So far I have quite a few of the copper/brass pieces boiled and polished up. The groups are stripped down but I still need to figure out how to descale the back of the head.

Congratulations! Glad to see your thread started. I'm curious if you've unwound the spring? I had a perfect tool for it around here somewhere, but now I can't seem to find it. Doh.

On the boiler rope-gasket. Any great tricks for getting it out?

Bummer on the heating element.

-phillip

Glad to see someone finally picked this one up. I had seen it listed for a while. Good luck with the restoration.

phillip canuck wrote:Congratulations! Glad to see your thread started. I'm curious if you've unwound the spring? I had a perfect tool for it around here somewhere, but now I can't seem to find it. Doh.

On the boiler rope-gasket. Any great tricks for getting it out?

Bummer on the heating element.

-phillip

I was able to get the pistons off by locking them in a wood lined vise and cranking the lever to 90 degrees to spin it off; worked well.

The boiler gasket... oh boy, I had to summon the patience of Doug (OE) and used a sharp 1/4" chisel. Still ended up leaving a few shallow gouges in the soft brass. Took me 4-5 days of whittling tiny piece by piece. Sorry, no tricks.

TomC wrote:Glad to see someone finally picked this one up. I had seen it listed for a while. Good luck with the restoration.

The prior owners were really wanting to leave the machine with someone who they felt would take care of it (great people). They really loved and revered the machine. After providing ~20 years of commercial use it was in need of a thorough clean up.


I do have a few issues that I need to work out still. Like: what elements to use, soft material parts for the cup warmer valve, how to convert back to a manual only fill and what route to take in restoring the frame and side panels.

I have to say that I am really enjoying the project. It is very satisfying to take blackened parts and return them to off the shelf shiny.

BTW- curious thing: no power switch. I plan on installing some sort of on/off switch. Perhaps on the side so as to not disturb the guardian lions.

Cheer and more pics to come!
rj

Whoa.....I guess you always hurt the one you love....looks like they nearly loved it to death!

Removing the autofill system looks the simplest of your tasks. Finding the two part element may be the biggest challenge. For some reason they hooked up the right steam to the water spigot...also both left and right wands have been changed out to swivel....which may be a good thing, but not original, if that concerns you. Make sure you keep all the old seals, particularly the teflon ones...the seals in the infusion valves are tricky to keep from leaking with the new model 85 spec parts.

Also, the pressure safety valve is wacko...likely a Hail Mary use of a standard valve instead of the LSM 20mm thread. The vac valve is an add on and much of the piping from that 4 way has been changed for some reason. Looks like a nice project once you figure it out...have fun with the valves...they all work backwards. Enjoy!

orphanespresso wrote:Whoa.....I guess you always hurt the one you love....looks like they nearly loved it to death!

Yes, the machine was worked hard in a commercial setting. I imagine they often had a very short amount of time to get the machine back up and running.

orphanespresso wrote:Removing the autofill system looks the simplest of your tasks.

Cap off the unneeded piping, including the water level sensor?

orphanespresso wrote:Finding the two part element may be the biggest challenge.

Darn it! Any idea of where to start the search at? Not even sure of the wattage.

orphanespresso wrote:For some reason they hooked up the right steam to the water spigot...

Really? The central top tap into the boiler has a dipper and goes to the hot water valve. Is that not the norm on this machine?

orphanespresso wrote:...also both left and right wands have been changed out to swivel...which may be a good thing, but not original, if that concerns you.

Not too concerned but it would be nice to have them matching at the least. I do like the swivel action.

orphanespresso wrote:Make sure you keep all the old seals, particularly the teflon ones...the seals in the infusion valves are tricky to keep from leaking with the new model 85 spec parts.

Yes indeed! The infusion valve seals are still in place. They seem to be quite lodged in there.

orphanespresso wrote:Also, the pressure safety valve is wacko...likely a Hail Mary use of a standard valve instead of the LSM 20mm thread.

Should I be able to find a LSM 20mm replacement?

orphanespresso wrote:The vac valve is an add on and much of the piping from that 4 way has been changed for some reason. Looks like a nice project once you figure it out...have fun with the valves...they all work backwards. Enjoy!

Backwards? I am not even sure which way is forwards! Do you mean the steam and water valves?

The large capped off tube on the hx intake is interesting. Perhaps for draining the hx? Do you know what model this is?

Thank you Doug (and Barb too!),
rj

Oh, now I see, that right hand wand shared the line for the steam cup warmer and the water is the center pipe only..sorry for the misinfo.

Mostly aces have parts and diagrams for the model 85 and these are mostly the same as your machine. I couldn't get one group heating element but eventually got lucky on some old stock.

As far as the electrical (and plumbing) rebuild I usually rip it all out and start over.

I can't quite see the capped off fitting so I can 't say.

I've been interested in the SM levas and their cousin (Izzo) for a while but had presumed the SM was a dipper supplimented by the feed from the hx. Looking at the internal boiler pic and the water line I just realised the "dippers" are hx pockets. But now I'm really confused - why not connect the main hx directly to the group internally? It looks like hx water is cooled externally en route to the group where it then remixes with water already sitting in the hx pocket - have I understood it correctly? It would make the Izzo a more distant cousin than I had thought. Thanks for adding to our collective knowledge!

Phillip-

I think you pretty much summed it up. I am still intrigued at the design. The hx is huge on this machine (~a liter) that sits in the steam. The short trip from hx to the group does some cooling. The closed tube holds around 20ml plus a 5-10ml in the pocket at the back of the group. My guess is that the shear amount of brass in the group coupled with perhaps a well calculated amount of steam heated water from the closed tube probably does a lot to balance the temp.

Glad my pics were able to help you better understand this machine. I certainly am still figuring the why of this thing. I probably spend 2 minute of ogling per minute of actual work on it.

Cheer,
rj

Rj

Thanks for that additional information on volumes. Someone was recently praising the steam heated hx over water heated hx for stability. Do you know what shot volume the group is designed for (single or double)? If single then it might need a purging shot if sitting too long (or not) or if doubles then the maybe it's designed to mix 30ml of cooled water with 30ml of hot? But then with the group distant from the boiler I would imagine it would take a while to heat up (with no thermosyphon flow) and would tend to cool the shot.

Do keep sharing your journey with your facinating machine!