Looks good so far.

For bearings that I clean and reuse I just use the same stuff as I use on the piston rod (Kynetx food grade aluminum grease). There are bearing specific greases, but the bearings won't be spinning at high rpm's so I don't expect anything super bad to happen if you go a little different.

Don't forget to check the group nuts, element nuts, and boiler nuts to see if they need tightening after a few cycles. I just slightly tightened my group nuts this evening even after a few weeks of use.

This is fantastic!! Congratulations!

Thank you again to everyone for your help and input. I will be tightening things down and continuing to test in the next few weeks. As always, I would have struggled much more without everyone's help here, and the ability to creep on other's old posts to steal their ideas....

While I am not in a position to give an opinion on the performance of this machine, I thought I would give a few final thoughts on the restoration process of the machine. Overall, it was a fun machine to restore. In some ways it was a pretty big challenge but looking back it maybe was not as big of a headache as I initially anticipated. I would still say the machine is slightly over engineered in my opinion. There are many characteristics about it that seem very strange and foreign. The boiler looks and feels like a stainless mixing bowl from inside your kitchen drawer. No lights, no pstat, and 5 switch positions was very strange for me as well. The group design just looks like alien technology. The engineer for this machine must have had a goal to make no flat surface anywhere for gaskets, everything has grooves. Even the group to boiler gasket surface is curved. All the fittings to the front of the boiler are compression fittings, similar to how a sight glass is sealed. I thought these would all give me massive problems... Even when they are all tightened, nothing feels solid, water and steam taps flop around. To my surprise everything seems to be completely sealed! .... So far.....

You've done a fantastic job with it, and I'm looking forward to seeing the look of the finished machine! To me, part of the beauty is that it comes from a time when invention and innovation ruled.... We are sadly missing that mindset today.

As one of the lurkers on this thread, I just want to say it's been a sheer pleasure! Great job and look forward to the final pic!

Testing in the laboratory continues..... After 5 days as my daily driver, still cannot find a leak. Probably will not leak until I add the new insulation and screw down the housing. Anyone have a recommended product for insulating the boiler? Espresso has been great, grinding much finer than when using the Prestina.

I found a seller on ebay who had 1/2" thick ceramic wool, and bought a sheet from him. You'd probably have to figure out how much you need, and either compare that to the amount they're selling, or ask them to sell you enough to suit your boiler's size.

Thankyou Austinado, I see one on Ebay called cerablanket that looks pretty good. I will give it a try.

Boiler Insulation and backsplash projects completed.