the boiler is complete, the valves too. all the plumbing descaled, cleaned, polished and clearcoated.now the grouphead... well, no progress on that front. the espresso machine repair shop here in sf is superbusy, works solely on conventional pump machines (who has a lever here in town anyway besides Blue Bottle?) and doesn't have any clue regarding lever machines. no problem if they would let you know right away...
anyway, doing some more research i found a company down in so-cal which was the distributor and customizer of gaggias in the 70's and 80's. they marketed as ABC back then. the company is still in business. and so is their repair shop. i talked with sergio whose response was 'no problem. send in the grouphead and you'll have it back in a week'. what??? seriously?