Originally Posted by
MrsBoats
Yes, an electric shop will have the brushes you need. Radio Shack, too, although I prefer our local, small-town, old-school hardware store. <snip>
A word of warning: Once you change the brushes, expect the motor to be clattery-noisy, probably for 10 hours of use or so. The reason is the new brushes-you're rubbing a new, sharp square brush end against the round commutator. Especially if you have the kind with the grooves cut in it; all that cleaning will clean out the gunk smoothing them out. As the brushes wear into shape, the motor will quiet down.
Thanks for this! Our version of Radio Shack is not what Radio shack once was here. So they aren't going to work, and our small town hardware shop is a chain store, so limited in what they carry. I have a line on a shop that might be able to help though. For the short term, I put the shorter than 1/4" ones back in for testing.
I wouldn't have thought of the louder part, so I appreciate that warning!
I did the cleanup today. About 2 hours of cleaning (Dawn and water for all plastic parts, and electric motor cleaner for the coils and the armature. Nothing is oily anymore, there's no carbon transfer when I wipe anymore, the armature had a date with an eraser, and I rewired from the male connector to the marettes. The copper wiring inside the motor looked good, if a little wet. (No cracks, and a different sort of covering than the aluminum wire outside the motor had) I noticed when I removed the leads from the male connector that they were loose, so that could have been the whole reason for the motor cutting out when we tested it.
I got it back together about an hour ago. It has the smell of unused motor when it runs, but no burning oil smell. It seems to be running strong. Yay! Boy, is a 201 ever a lot quieter than a 15 or a motorized 28!
My next 3 hurdles with the machine now are:
A spool pin plate, which a little research has told me are as rare as gilded hen's teeth
Light shade
Grease wick. The wick in the motor was very very ruined, so will need to be replaced. I will see if the electrical shop has that when I go in there next week. It will get cleaned up and tuned up in the meantime.
Originally Posted by
Vintage.Singers.NYC
It's no sweat; yes, that motor is shot, but if you're certain it's a 201-3--that is, there a belt attached to your motor--then the motor is pretty easy to swap out with a new one, which you can get for maybe 20 bucks and will have your machine humming. (Assuming the rest of the machine is in order.) Try Jenny at Sew-Classic.
Hey Rain,
Thanks for the info. I suspect that the motor has a (much) shortened life span? It seems to have resurrected quite well. The bearings seemed good, the armature and coils looked ok, other than wet, so I figured I'd give it a try.
I've bought tons from Jenny, she's got some great stuff.
It's definitely a 201-3, I had a question mark in the topic, because ismacs identifies it as a 201K, which a little searching tells me is the same as a 201-3 - light in the back, belted motor.
The machine hums along! It still needs a full tune up, it was a bookcase display before yesterday, but it looks like there's no reason it won't stitch.