Lube Your Lever!

 In my humble opinion, repairers appear to mostly miss a part of the rebuild that I think is the single most important feedback point to the user - the lever mechanism . If it feels "crunchy" or "harsh" when you operate the lever, it can spoil what should be a smooth pull, applying pressure to evenly counter the resistance of the lever.

Here are the pins and roller taken from a fairly new machine. The pins are supposed to be the same diameter along the whole length and are originally plated as is the roller which in this case had lost 20% of it's diameter and was very rusty. Keep them oiled rather than greased to reduce wear. If you do one thing to the machine, do this.  If you continue to use it like this it will speed up the wear on the lever and more fatally, the group slot.

The roller plating is worn off and with no lubrication begins to rust, it will in turn wear the brass group slot. I can repair worn lever handle pivot holes to get back the original size and position. 

you can normally reuse the original No 5 e clips as they are stainless steel but sometimes need to be squeezed to make them lock on the pin again, 

If you follow the advice above and restore performance with new pins and roller (even more with the bronze upgrade) and repair the pivot holes no further maintenance will be needed for many years, if you  LUBE YOUR LEVER!

I have had some very worn machines recently  - beat that!