une Reneka - la machine du Capitaine Nemo?

Salut mes amis français!

Je l'ai trouvé quelque chose qui ressemble il est venu de la cuisine du «Nautilus»

Mais je parle français, malheureusement, à peine.
Vous me permettre de bien vouloir poursuivre cette discussion en anglais?

Merci :-)

So...
In an evil corner of the sea, em, bay, I found the remnants of something that remindet me of long lost memories, of stories of Captain Nemo and his ship, the Nautilus.
I couldn´t resist but salvaging this beautiful piece of design and technology - and today it arrived, still packed in its deep sea cover box   :


I had some assistance in unpacking and unwrapping - and they found some treasure of their liking


Finally we found something shaped interesting


secured pretty good... even better than what I know of Pascals artful bondage  



Any guesses on what this is?


Now here is a clue:



and another one...



To be continued...

... and after some really heavy lifting (my back still hurts)

in all its shining glory:








I am really looking forward to getting to know this Reneka XY a little better, maybe Pascal and Sebastien could bring some light into the Strassburgian nomenclatura :-)


I will have many questians and hope that you help me preventing to make too many mistakes

Merci,

Holger

OMG, that's a cute machine!

And thanks for sharing that moment with moment with us.

Quel look !

J'en reviens pas.

Wooooooooowwwww stunning !

I know nothing about these big beasts, so... just basic remarks and then questions:

1) the lever looks very small, and apparently can be assembled either on the left or on the right of the group ?

2) there is a sight glass for the group chamber.

So, my questions are:  Is there a spring ????? Or the lever just opens a valve to fill the group from the boiler, which is under pressure ? And if there is no spring, is it steam in the group that pushes the water ? (Sorry if all what I say is completely stupid/crazy).

From the size, that must be a hotel group, not an espresso one.

Due the the presence of a sight glass for the group chamber, I guess this machine does not do "espresso, crema" etc at 8-9 bars. The extraction here should be at around 1 bar.

In some sense, it may yield an extraction in preinfusion conditions (in our today vocabulary) ?

Hi Holger !
Sorry for the delay, I'm just coming back from vacations and have some hard time to get back on the train.  

What a great discovery ! Few months ago, Vincent found one (that was finally too expensive)... certainly a bit older than yours.



It is the famous "groupe hotel" from Reneka. I think the only schematic available can be found on the 1954 patent (in french).



It is closer to an "Express" than an "Espresso" group. If you go back to the Reneka story, you'll find some pictures of models very close to yours, like this one:



Yours is maybe one of the machine next to mister Kauss himself on this picutre:



Who knows...  

Sure Seb 😉

Just come back from vacation today too Holger, it is a great pleasure to see your awesome found here, many thanks for sharing !

Salut,
Pardon pour mon absence

I still haven´t improved my French

But I took some more pictures











I happened to have a naked Empress on my bench, so I took the liberty of comparing the dimensions of the machines.



In the first euphoria I was thinking of switching the hotel group with a true lever group (I thought, the Conti group should fit as there were Reneka machines with Conti-group-lookalikes), should I ever find a suitable one. But when I took a closer look I found the connections to be "unexpected different"

This is my Conti group on top, the flange is substantially smaller - and it will never fit to this umbilical chord-like connections, of course.

After a few days of thinking, I came to the conclusion to leave the configuration of this machine untouched and carefully try to restore it.

Under the hood I found some rudely cut tubes - and no electrical element.


No electrical cable at all... This are empty covers:


The gas regulator must have gotten a bit warm...


As for the name of this machine, something interesting came up on the sidepanel:

To me this looks like "Major I" - I thought the small double lever of Pascal was named Major ???    


Thanks to all of you for the helpfull and / or encouraging comments  

Merci,
Holger

Great !

Reminds me the Faema Nettuno when I look the side view...

qu'est ce qu'elle est belle cette machine et d’ailleurs ça en est ou maintenant?

I wouldn't know whether to make coffee with it or pray to it.

Maybe both.

Lovely machine!

Quand tu vois le bouton qui a fondu, perso j'irais la brancher et la faire allumer par ma belle mère.

Magnifique machine, mais quelle galère à restaurer !

What's a look ! (je voulais écrire en anglais moi aussi)

Ca pète grave !  (in french dans le texte)        

Sansibar99 a écrit:
In the first euphoria I was thinking of switching the hotel group with a true lever group (I thought, the Conti group should fit as there were Reneka machines with Conti-group-lookalikes), should I ever find a suitable one. But when I took a closer look I found the connections to be "unexpected different"

This is my Conti group on top, the flange is substantially smaller - and it will never fit to this umbilical chord-like connections, of course.

Holger, just by curiosity: what is the distance between two flange holes (center to center) for both groups ? Is it 45cm for the Conti group and 55cm for the Hotel Group by any chance ?

Hi there : lovely shapes, that Reneka !

What's a "hotel groupe" ? SOmething to make "american coffee" like ?

https://expresso.1fr1.net/t9094-les-grandes-marques-francaises

Un groupe hôtel est le groupe qui servait à préparer des grosses quantité de café en une seule fois. C'est lui qui était utilisé pour préparer les bols de café des petits déjeuners dans les hôtels.

pootoogoo a écrit:
Holger, just by curiosity: what is the distance between two flange holes (center to center) for both groups ? Is it 45cm for the Conti group and 55cm for the Hotel Group by any chance ?

Bonjour Sébastien,

sorry for the delay - i didn´t get any notifications...

The Reneka is still holding a warm winters sleep in the basement, but from what I remember, the Conti group has 50mm (mm!   ), and a friend had his Reneka lever group measured with 44mm.
I will check this measurements when I clean up the basement

In the meantime I came across a beautiful and unidentified old levergroup with two lateral, external springs. It seems to be in working condition ...
But so far I neither have a portafilter for this nor a suitable espressomachine to attach it to.

In my dreams I picture this group fixed to the Reneka, with a machined angled adapter... maybe one day?

Wow, another great discovery! Never seen a group like this before.
Well, for real...  

It seems very similar to a 1953 La Pavoni group :



(Check the patent here)

maybe it's not the best engineering way for a lever group, but what a look ! It would shurely be perfect for a Captain Nemo machine ! Tell us more about how you found just a lonely group like this !

Wow, Sébastien,
fantastique!!!

Of all the espresso-gods I´ve asked - Maltoni, Zeb , Paul Pratt, Andrea, Davide, Dominique etc... - no one had seen this before.
There were hints on colaborations between LSM & Vittoria Arduino in the 50s, and some guesses on La Pavoni because of the lever handle that looks like from a Pavoni 55 (but the seller wasn´t sure, if the handle came with the group at all...)

And there you are, showing off with the right patent !

Merci, merci, merci !!!

(I just bought a strange brew group fragment last week, with an external heating element - I will show this when I have some pictures ready )

elvice2000 a écrit: maybe it's not the best engineering way for a lever group, but what a look ! It would shurely be perfect for a Captain Nemo machine ! Tell us more about how you found just a lonely group like this !

It kind of found me...