I feel your pain. Recently purchased a pre-owned Pfaff 7570 and had a devil of a time FMQing a tablerunner. It was like a wrestling an alligator around a bathtub. I could have pieced a full-sized quilt in the same time!
Your comment about the instruction manual was spot on - it could use some tweaking. I wonder if it was written in German and then translated or written by someone whose native tongue is German.
Anyway, a friend gave me a can of silicone spray which I used on my thread (which, to top things off was a metalic) and I used a pair of latex gloves. When I spritzed the spool of thread some of the overspray got onto the machine bed. That helped too, a lot, but I was hesitant to just apply it to the machine bed just willy nilly. Makes me wonder if I want to send the $$$ on that silicone sheet.