Hello Everyone,

I'd like to welcome you all to my detailed build thread of my newly acquired Faema Faemina. This was a bit of an unexpected purchase as the last 2 months or so I was contemplating an Arrarex Caravel, but I lost out on a couple of ebay auctions. Instead I happened upon this jewel and though my original intention was not to acquire something that was in need of such an extensive overall, I think I'm up for this challenge, and hope it will be a lot of fun. I cordially invite you all to share your expertise and criticism at any stage of the build.

My first bit of relief came when the machine arrived intact. It had survived an overseas shipment which had had me worried, but fortunately the seller had done a brilliant job of packaging. She's mostly complete, missing only the drip tray, and for the purists, the knock box. Aesthetically, there's quite a bit of work to be done. I might be able to polish some of the parts, but the boiler wrap and base definitely need to be rechromed. The base appears to be chromed aluminum, so maybe stripping all the chrome and polishing it by hand might be an option? As for the wrap, no real other options that I can think of.
I plugged in the machine to test the elements and it's heating water in both switch positions, but from what I understand the low element is always on, so can't really determine whether the high element works that way. I couldn't bring it up to high pressures because a leak started at the boiler cap, so I took the Multimeter out and measured resistance at both elements. I got a reading of 63 ohms for the high element and 228 ohms for the low element, which seems to indicate they're both good, since this equates to about 1000 total watts at 220v.
Looking inside the boiler it all looks pretty clean and I can clearly read the markings on the elements, including what looks to be a date stamp, 06/63 (June, 1963?). Underneath the boiler I can also see a serial number and no evidence of any leaks there.
The sight glass reveals some buildup and rust on the spring. Not sure if the spring will clean up fine or if it will need to be re coated. What would be best? I see chrome springs available, but will chrome stand up to citric acid when it comes time to descale?
I'll be looking to order the seal/gasket set from OE, and will continue to update this thread. Please be patient as this endeavor might take me some time.
Cheers to all of you!

Well done, getting such a heavy machine in tact from overseas can be tricky.Prices for these seem to be steadily rising, especially the professionally restored ones out of Australia.A few pointers to get you started;

Drip tray - lots of them seem to be missing, i wonder where they all go?

Base - First series were chromed Aluminium, second series were polished aluminium.Whilst it is possible to re-chrome plate aluminium, its a little more complicated and rare than standard chrome plating.I'd just polish the aluminium.Most of the first series chrome is in bad condition.Removing the base for chrome plating can be difficult as well.There is a pin thru the base pillar, but once this is removed it is still a press fit to remove the base.

Spring, i re-used the original as it was in good condition and was stainless steel.I have seen the new ones available in Italy, and was a bit perplexed why they made them in chrome plated steel.As you say de-scaling will attack the chrome, not to mention the extreme heat cycling and compression, and once the chrome starts to flake off and clog up the brew path.... Especially on a machine where it is not exactly straight forward to remove the piston/spring

Good to see you've ordered the parts from OE, they have an excellent re-build guide on the site too for the Faemina

Thanks for the reply.

I've found a couple of places in my area who supposedly chrome aluminum. I hope to have the machine disassembled this week and hopefully have some quotes on the re-plating early next week some time. I'm bracing myself for some crazy figures. Someone suggested to me to look into spray-chrome. It's a new technique, even featured on Jay Leno's Garage show. It's supposed to be vastly cheaper and something you can do yourself. The DIY kits would be a bit pricy for this small project but for someone restoring a vehicle, it seems to be worth it. Already found someone local who is offering the service.

One small part that has me curious is that black plastic cup under the lower boiler cover. What's the point of that? It's just held in place with a screw with no obvious purpose. Am I missing something really obvious? Is it a tamper?

Welcome to lever land! I'm almost grateful to see another vintage leverhead lover above the 49th (I have spent 2 grueling years trying to get anything going over here on Vancouver Island but there's been less than zero interest). And a Faema Faemina at that - a long time wish list item of mine.
It doesn't look to be a huge undertaking and I really look forward to the rebuild updates.

Yes that black plastic cup is a built on tamper. Welcome to the Faemina Club! The hardest variable to master on the Faemina is thermal management, and a fast heat up is not your friend, but rather your scourge. Good luck! My patience wore thin when I 1st got my Faemina working, but I am back at trying to figure this machine out.

Congrats on that score, always get excited to follow these threads.

PS- Get those lemons out of that bowl, rind them, drop them in some grappa and make yourself some Limoncello They look awesome!

mondovino wrote:Yes that black plastic cup is a built on tamper. Welcome to the Faemina Club! The hardest variable to master on the Faemina is thermal management, and a fast heat up is not your friend, but rather your scourge. Good luck! My patience wore thin when I 1st got my Faemina working, but I am back at trying to figure this machine out.

Hilarious, I had no idea it was a tamper until today. A nice SS one in that place would be a nice addition me thinks.
I was rather impressed with how fast the machine got hot even when on the low element. Good luck with your continued struggle to tame this girl. I believe it will be a bit of a handful for me as well.

The problem is that since the group is the same conductive piece of metal that the boiler is made out of, the group head will overheat and produce burned shots very quickly. It is not a machine to froth your milk with since to do that your need to produce steam which causes the espresso group head to overheat and be unusable for making the espresso.

I had some time to dedicate to the Faemina today so here is a little update of what I was able to accomplish. The OE tutorial recommended to descale first if the machine can hold water so I went ahead and did that. The top element really cleaned up nicely! Now I can read the date stamp clearly. I was reading it upside down before. It reads "59/9". Could this be a 1959 machine? There was quite a bit of buildup that came off the boiler as well, even though it didn't appear to be too bad at first.


The spring looks like it's going to come out just fine. I just lightly scraped my nail on the surface and the bit of rust came right off.


I removed the portafilter gasket and the paper gasket behind it. The tools pictured below really aid with this. The boiler cap seal came apart in chunks. It must have been the original. The dispersion screen is a pressed fit which I carefully pried off after cleaning around it a bit.



Now she sleeps like a bat! This is too allow the penetrating oil to seep down into the cylinder's threads before I attempt to remove it tomorrow.

So I've completely removed the "guts" of the machine, leaving only the heating elements in the boiler. The penetrating oil really worked for the group cylinder as it moved with the first three wacks of the hammer. I used a hammer and punch, not having the appropriate spanner socket. Patience was key. I think it took nearly 30 revolutions of the cylinder before I was able to undo the rest by hand. At least it felt like that many. The wife wasn't too pleased with all the noise in the late hours of the night (couldn't wait until next morning) .
It didn't appear to me like that cylinder had ever been removed, yet there was no cylinder to body gasket, which was odd. The machine had not been leaking from the group. To compress the spring I used a large clamp with a large socket bit pressed against the piston. I then removed the rod pin at the top and the whole thing dropped out. The collar nut at the top that holds the rod seal was removed using a 27mm socket. There was no o-ring beneath that rod seal! That's two seals missing yet there was no leaks there. The spring was in worse shape then thought as rust had set in pretty badly at the base. Not sure if I should re-use it since I fear rust might come back. I used every home remedy I knew to clean the rust. I'm on the third day now and it looks ok. I might opt to buy the chrome spring on ebay. Take a look at the corrosion in the pics and let me know what you guys think.
I also broke off three screw heads trying to remove the bottom base cover. Will try to extract them though they are quite small. One of the switches was badly corroded at the back so I'll have to buy the replacement from OE. I might just order 2 new switches. Next week I'm going to get some quotes on re-chroming some parts.