Started restoring a two group Conti, a PMS Evolution. I got out the bore hone to clean up the group head cylinders to see and feel this. I'm guessing the cylinder is chrome plated brass and the actual cylinder wall is just a plating?

What are people's opinions on reconditioning/plating vs buying new group assemblies? Conti's website shows a complete group assembly is ~$300 or so.

The manual group body, part# 199200, is listed for 75 euro, plus shipping. So any repair other than 'fill the rough area with epoxy and sand it smooth' is probably not cost effective.

If I were you I'd first try the epoxy fix. But I'm impatient, and epoxy takes less time to cure than the shipping of the part. If the epoxy doesn't hold, you can always go the 'new part' route.

Some photos of work in no particular order.

Look at that scale...

Slow but progress is progress. Will be using the carbon sheet but the white delrin shows what it will look like covered up.

Plumbing pretty much done

Little test

The first test showed no leaks or faults but I now understand why a pressurestat is so important and a PID is useless in a single boiler machine. At Least now I have a very fancy temperature display

Added a pressurestat, got the second GS3 steam wand in, insulated the hard lines and more importantly, the tank. Also put IEC 320 C14 and C19 receptacles on the bottom so I can plug in 110v for testing or 220v when it finds its home with enough power. Not making much progress right now, still need to order the group heads from Conti. Some of the carbon panels are trimmed and ready to be fitted but not until the groups are installed and the front panel goes on.

And a quick photo of the electronics boxes without the covers on. Power distribution, water level controller and LED driver for all the solenoid switches.

Finally got my group heads from Conti. This group assembly shares some parts with their fancy sleek "SIXTY" machine. Going to convert some of the parts later.

I'm quite excited to see the end result of this amazing project... Beautiful work so far!

Body panels coming together and hopefully the final assembly!

Water level sight LED "on" indicates steam pressure stable. RH front panel push button is a water fill override in case the auto-sense stops working; LED "on" indicates water level good.

LH buttons on the front panel are separate for main power and PID/heating element power; their LED's go on when each button is pressed.