No worries!! It's really easy to miss it in all the clutter down there.
In fact, I need to do a little house cleaning, I purged a few of them, traded for something uh,.. not vintage, but equally cool I'll post about later. I was so excited, I've had about 6 hours sleep in 2 days. Hopefully this is coherent, and not alphabet soup I'm typing. I think I'll forgo driving today.
The plate on the 411G has the finger under the CS plate going in the opposite direction. The T&S plate doesn't physically fit. Correct, the plate and the bobbincase both are harder to find than gilded hen's teeth.
The 431G chain stitches. It's an amazing machine. Everything the 401 is, plus the Open arm and the CS. If you can get your hands on a working one for under $200, you're doing well. I had to price one of the 2 I had here this week (one of the machines I traded) and couldn't find one on a finished eBay auction for under $200 on the first page of hits,... and a serviced one went for over $400 and as high as $550 before shipping.
Be warned though, for some reason -both- of the 431Gs I picked up had to be timed to sew 100% correctly. And one of the gals on the Singer Slant yahoo group said hers goes out of time, which I can't understand given how the "underbits" are designed. I think there's something else up there.
I believe that the bobbin case could be fabricated though. It's basically the case for the 401(500, and I Think some of the T&S machines) with an extra "finger" on it to lift the thread into the CS mechanism. It's just flat metal bent into shape then expoxied into place (it looks like epoxy on the original 411G/ 431G case)
I don't think many of the manuals designated a G or whatever. The 431 is typically a G, from what I understand, I don't know if they were made anywhere other than Germany (what the G stands for) I typically read "The German 431". That's the manual that came with my 431G. I've seen that there are some manuals (the online ones) floating around that don't have the CS information in them. Sort of like how some of the 221 manuals don't have certain information in them. Perhaps an oversight that lead to a revision later?
I was being a little facetious about the Teflon. I know it's a nasty substance, hence why I close the door to the "shop". I seem to remember this is why you never heat an empty teflon pan on the stove.
We often say about most of our animals, "If I hadn't gotten them, natural selection would have". They're sweet, but of the 5 we've had in recent years, 3 of them missed the "brains" line up at the factory. The one that licks machines also likes to sit with her head in the throat of an operating SM and babble at me. Yes, I stop when she tries to jockey into that position. Stunned me the first time. I yelled "DANGER!!" but that didn't stop her long term..