I noticed my lever on my La Pavoni Professional (Millenium) has become looser over the year. I've owned the lever from brand new for just over a year and it was much tighter when I first purchased it. I've confirmed the pins are tight. It's not causing any issues but I was wondering if there was a way to easily remove the extra play? Any ideas on how I may go about tightening it or what may be causing it?

I've included the youtube video of the occurrence, below:

https://youtu.be/ks7eFG1Whwg

This problem has been discussed on occasion formerly in this forum. Get some 6mm brass rod and an M6 die. Remove the pins from the top of the group and cut off a piece of this brass rod about 12 mm longer than the width of the handle fork. Cut threads on each end of the rod, so that a place in the centre remains unthreaded for the width of the handle fork. You can put decorative nuts on each side of the two rods and it looks very impressive. The so called dome or acorn nuts look great. There are other wilder alternatives like spike nuts. When you tighten these down it will draw the sides of the fork together and remove all looseness. Do not rush, take your time, and it not only work better, it will also look better. The next time you service the machine you can simply remove the nuts instead of the disgusting clips as an added benefit.

I agree with Robert's suggestion and used it on one machine, but also used spacers inside the fork. Use your judgment about whether you need spacers.

(start of rant)

On the Millennium machines the fork can be made of potmetal, and you don't want to overstress it. Robert's also frequently written about the deterioration in build quality on recent La Pavoni levers. I agree entirely. The potmetal on the machine I saw in the repair shop was rusting after the chrome had flaked off. And yet these machines can pull nice shots and steam well. How much can they cheapen them before this interferes with their function? Try the insufficiently attached wooden boiler caps that come loose and risk sudden release of steam pressure!

(rant over)

For spacers you can use metal ones or nylon or PTFE. Take you pick. They're difficult to keep aligned inside the fork but it can be done and to good effect. I used the spacers on my Millennium machine without creating new lever pins, and it seemed to help. However, brass pins become consumable instead steel pins that can elongate the hole in the piston rod. And threading those pins to attach acorn nuts is a much better solution than using clips. Anyone who's had a clip spring off the workbench during routine servicing will know this.

I forgot something yesterday. It is a good idea to put brass washers between the decorative nuts and the group handle. These can be used as for spacers, as suggested by Gary above, too. The reason for using brass rather than steel is, as Gary also pointed out, is that this reduces wear on other parts, you can easily replace brass pins, but wear otherwise creates problems. Good grease also reduces wear!

Thanks for the comments. I'll have to look around for some 6mm brass rods.

The image below shows a La Pavoni (real brass, 1999) in which the pins have been replaced with 6mm threaded rods with brass M6 "spike" nuts from a motorcycle shop.

A discussion began asking about buying advice for current machines, given comments here about overall build quality. That discussion is worth its own topic, so I split it off here.

La Pavoni Build Quality Changes?

I'm starting to see noticeable wear on my pins. I like the threaded rods but was also curious about using 4mm rods with 4mm I.D./6mm O.D. Teflon tubing over it.

How are you guys threading the ends of the brass rod without tearing up the middle part holding it?

Teflon tubing over the lever pins will quickly wear away. There's a lot of pressure on a little bit of surface and it's soft plastic. I would go with 6mm brass rods.

It really is amazingly easy to convert a piece of 6mm brass rod into lever pins. I found that one needs to cut the rods to be between 38.5 and 39mm in length. Using a sharp die, cut M6x1.0 threads for 9mm on both ends. The only tools you really need are a good hack saw and a sharp M6x1.0 die. Brass is very easy to work when you have sharp tools. (A dull die can create serious problems.) Be careful to get the dimensions fairly close to what I specified above. You want the threads to go just to the handle and no farther on both sides.

One simple place to get 6mm brass rods is from ebay stores in China.

You can find decorative nuts from web sites or from some hardware stores. Unless you have a brass machine you should probably go for stainless steel ones. Acorn nuts look very good. If you want the "chopper look" you can find some spike nuts like the ones I showed earlier in this thread. There also are some fairly good looking locking nuts that you could use.