Hi Angela, Rain here. As I'm sure you and your husband have observed, there are so many steps involved in the potted motor re-wire that it's tough for me to guess where you might have gone wrong or maybe cut a corner. I've spent a lot of time trying to help others who also had problems, only to have them eventually confess that they skipped a step (or two!) in the tutorial, and I'm eager not to burn too many calories on that one again!
But, let's assume you've followed every step to the letter and try this. If the motor is not running at top speed, that either means a) it's a problem with the motor, or b) something further down the "chain of command" is slowing the motor down and preventing it from running at top speed. You can save yourself a lot of trouble by isolating which of those two problems it might be, and thus halving the amount of things you'd have to check.
If you're in the NYC/Tri-State area, I invite you to drop the machine off with me in Manhattan so I can take a look. If you're not, I can offer a few suggestions, but without having the machine in front of me these are real needle-in-a-haystack types of guesses.
- Try putting the machine in bobbin-winding mode and running the motor. Still slow?
- Examine the springs connected to the brushes. Are they deformed?
- Remove the brushes and ensure the brush tubes are nice and clean. If there's gunk or excessive powder in there, that can jam the brushes up and prevent them from making the appropriate amount of contact with the commutator.
- As a last-ditch effort, try rotating the brushes 90 degrees and re-inserting them. I know you feel you've already got them in the proper orientation, but if the motor's already running poorly, it will not hurt to try this.
I have two requests for you:
1) Please let us know how it goes. It's a bit frustrating when you put the time in to try to help others--and then you never hear back from them. All of us here hope you can get the machine running tip-top, so we're invested!
2) Please let us know what it is you did that got the motor running after your first post in this series, when it wasn't running. Any little bit of information on what you did to fix something can help others who were in the same boat.
thanks,