Yes, that was brattish of me,.. sorry.
Well, I finally stopped at 5am, when I figured out I needed to time the machine, and my brain wasn't functioning well enough to figure out how to do it anymore.
This is what was hiding behind the back plate (that's only old nasty grease on the shaft and top of the gear.):
[ATTACH=CONFIG]351956[/ATTACH]
[ATTACH=CONFIG]351957[/ATTACH]
I'm reasonably sure that if we'd realised that the feed dogs weren't moving, we would have taken it anyway. I was just glad to see that I could fix it.
Awake now, with my 6 hours sleep, I think this is why my timing is off. I didn't try to mesh the gear in a particular place I just slid it to the left. It's either that or the "pendulum" piece under the face plate that fell off in my hands when I removed the plate to oil under it.