The gasket stack was nasty, and I immediately bagged the suspect fiber gaskets so no pick of the old gasket stack. I unscrewed the 80mm nut in my vise by hand. The portafilter gasket was still pliable so I could easily take it out with a shim. I noted a small nick in the group sleep but it should not impede the piston. I'll still see if I can somewhat bend it back.
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The water inlet fit very nicely in my vise, so I did not have much trouble getting it apart. It is actually pretty simple, with a single gasket for the valve itself necessary. The bakelite handle needed the impact driver to loosen the bolt. There was rubber stuffed in the hose side of the inlet, almost as if to block it off.
The steam valve is also simple and is just like my Internazionale steam valve. The manometer/upper glass sight fitting came apart after.
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With the valves apart I did a citric acid bath to see how well preserved the chrome was. It was hit or miss, but a lot of the pieces are actually in decent shape. There was a lot of hemp and teflon tape taken off. Unfortunately I discovered two cracks. One is on the lower shutoff valve fitting with the stuck rod. It's not very deep (maybe 3mm) but something grasped that surface violently that caused this crack. The second crack is on the stuck shutoff rod itself where the bakelite handle attaches. I did not notice these cracks until after but in theory they should not impact functionality as the area where the gasket rests goes far deeper than the crack on the fitting. The rod is still stuck, and while I would prefer to have it taken off, something is blocking the threads. I can move the rod maybe a 1/6th of a turn max but it is in the open position.
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For the cracked valve and stuck rod I am currently electing to keep it as is after discussing the situation with some experts. I am doing this because the method to fix the situation would likely ruin the chrome and I do not want to rechrome anything if possible. There is also the possibily the old valve breaks. The crack in the valve is definitely shallow enough to not affect sealing. I descaled the boiler today with the lid. I took off the heating elements first as I decide what to do with the old ones. One of them states 1300W but I have not measured the resistance yet. After soaking for an hour the gasket softened so that I could scrape most of it off with a hobby knife.
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My secret? Citric acid actually, no polishing was involved. If the oxidation is mostly superficial I can dunk the piece in a citric acid bath for 20-30 minutes and that oxidation will come off while leaving the good chrome alone during that short soak. It worked out surprisingly well and I did it for a few other pieces too (as long as the base metal was non-ferrous).
Finally, you might have noted the big vise behind one of the pics. I got a neat vintage Parker No 23X vise as an upgrade to my little harbor freight vise. It was $100 and it's pretty hefty.
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2nd descale occured, I have a lot of the scale is removed but I am debating letting it soak more. This second time I just plugged the lower fittings since the majority of scale is below the upper fittings. I also loosened the plug. It is an M8 thread and I do not know why it was installed since it cannot be accessed without taking off the valves + group followed by the backsplash. At that point you could just open one of the lower valves to drain the water! I am thankful though that the plug was brass and not something ferrous that could rust.
A problem that I inspected in more detail is the lower body panel. At some point during shipment the thread that secures the body panel to the lower skirt took a dent. I will need to gently hammer it back with a dolly set, otherwise I cannot fit the panel in without leveraging it, complicating the process. That is also why it appears that part of the machine appeared dented inwards. The GAGGIA lettering is secured by two M2 studs that thread into each letter. The Gaggia emblem on the side of the panel comes off via 4 tiny brass screws.
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I did the tumbler action with the dirty bits. I kept a few hex nuts and another piece out of it at the last minute since those just had cupric oxide, which is an inert layer that protects the metal underneath.
The manometer cleaned up nicely! The bezel is actually in really good condition! I am about 90% certain the date written on it says August 11 1953. Unfortunately some of the date was rubbed off as the metal ring separated from the manometer face.
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I forgot to note two additional things from yesterday.
as I was cleaning the piston I noted there was a decent amount of play between the rack piece screwing into the piston and the rack itself. The rack is a three piece assembly involving a pin that secures two pieces together. By design there is a little play where the upper rack can move around, but the Classica's rack has more play than the Internazionale and my spare rack. It is something I will need to pay attention to and see if it will fail/shear off, but it could simply be it's a different/earlier design where it intentionally has more play. Note the thicker teeth on the Classica's rack and a different shaped at the bottom of the upper rack compared to the Internazionale's piston on the left in the pic below.
The shutoff valve was removed as well. It was extremelly stuck not because of stuck threads, but rather by the ancient rubber gasket that was very very brittle and hardened. I had to heat up the area to break up the gasket, and eventually once I removed enough of the gasket the rod simply unscrewed without effort. Note I will recommend a fully enclosed socket or 6 sided wrench as my open faced 7mm wrench slipped around the hex head from too much torque.
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Some more cleaning was done today, this time for the big panels. All I did is dunk the pieces in citric acid for about 30 minutes, then rinsed and wiped them off. You can see the wear and scratches on some pieces with the right light but honestly I am super chuffed at how much better the chrome turned out to be than what I was expecting. The big round body panel with the lettering has a speckled patina that does not come off with polishing or cleaning so that will be its final state. I also cleaned up the GAGGIA lettering. Note some of the crooked letters. I bet they reamed the holes for the studs by hand! Of course every piece seems to be rocking the stamped 1734 serial number.
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