This will be one of two concurrent topic threads I'll be doing to account for the two machines that arrived today.

After two weeks in Portuguese customs I finally received my Faema Lambro. It was a bargain find and am very excited to learn new skills from it. It is in need of some work cosmetically and functionally. I think this will be the first machine I fully restore to like new condition due to the poor exterior condition. All the bits and bobs are present except for the parts mentioned below. They are packed in the little box resting on the drip tray.







The Lambro is currently missing the plexi top and Lambro logo, but I have replicas in shipment. The Faema badge is present but badly warped. I'll see if I can smooth it flat again before looking for a spare.

Oh Ryan!

That's so exciting!

A Faema Lambro is for many of us, lever heads, a dream machine... Really excited to follow the restoration thread!

Knowing how generous you are with details and pictures, this will be quite entertaining!

Congrats on your latest findings!

Cheers!

* Did I just put exclamation marks at the end of every sentence?? I must really be excited!

A few more initial state pics. It's pretty original and besides the two missing exterior bits everything else is present. The boiler and pipes are in a pretty nasty shape as is the body frame. Rust and oxidation everywhere. Because of this I will keep the Lambro in the garage to use the propane torch since my parents will not allow me to use it in the lever dungeon basement.

You can see the feet look pretty fused to the frame as well. I am pleased to see a Mercury p-stat with the original ceramic insulation beads. I will try to clean those up and reuse them. It also can be gas powered. The stainless steel panelling actually looks really good and I think I can just clean them up. I am really tempted to rechrome the lower group so we'll see what happens. Due to the low initial cost basis of this machine I can budget funds for this purpose or other needed repairs.







The exterior panels will definitely need a refresh. It also appears bent in the wavy brass area and the logo appears partially melted! The portafilter handle appears to be not original and the lever was painted black?? The chrome strip of metal that holds the plexi is still present though. I am now on my 4th Faema wobbler weight as well

Day 1 is at an end and I used it to probe the condition of the boiler and see how much (ie painful) the fittings will fight me. To sum: I will be using a lot of propane

The boiler nuts mostly unscrewed so far but I am already prepping to get some hacksaw blades as I am not expecting the bolts to come out. Iam already predicting the feet are going to be extremelly painful I to removed; the threads look fused! I'll take my time with chemical treatments for those once everything else is off. The group will be tended to soon as well.







The Mercury p-stat will need some love and attention (though I could say this for most of the machine). I might just dunk the whole thing in Evaporust before attempting to remove anything. I intend to use it if possible.


The heating element is from 1987, and it had a teflon gasket! Pretty impressive if it lasted that long and was never serviced in between.



The adhesive sticker only has a number (24197) and voltage (220V). The manometer has a date of 19 December 1953, which seems a tad old for the machine.

The frame is mostly stripped at this point, just the steel panels, gas burner, and aluminum feet are still attached. Time to break out chemical rust dissolvers for those feet. I'll drill the rivets out then punch the remainder which keep the panels on the frame.




The boiler has two stubborn pipes remaining even after multiple propane cycles. To ensure I do not accidentaly shear off or damage the t-fitting connecting these pipes to the boiler I intend to dunk the boiler with those pipes still attached in my citric acid bath. I am going out to get a hacksaw blade for the boiler lid. I will just cut through them as the bolts are very fused to the rings.



The group mostly came apart, but the flow restrictor and shutoff valve are still attached. I'll work on those in the coming week. The group M8 bolts attaching it to the frame are rusted and will need some coaxing to come out. Everything else came off without issue. It was a strange mix of bolts, nuts, or pipes needing very little force to unscrew/loosen while other fittings are rock solid and will not budge. I actually did not need to go out and buy a tool this time and had everything I needed to wrangle the machine apart!



The pipe attached to the lower sight glass fitting connects to the gas regulator.

It's a question at this point of where to put it if I get something like that