Originally Posted by
xxxxxxxxxx
FYI on the bright pink Brother 461 Festival.
The feed dogs didn't go back N forth, just up N down. that was the stitch length shaft , which a 15 clone style, easy to remove, took maybe 30/40 minutes, then every thing worked fine.
last night I checked and lude the gears,, which only drive the bobbin. Pfaff style, The gears are metal not plastic they do look like pot metal. which breaks, I found new gears at $24.95.
before tearing into that machine I did the google searching on the feed dog moving thing .. every site I read it ended up being blamed on broken PLASTIC gears. even a OSMG telling a lady to toss it that repair cost would be to high in labor.
HOG wash !!!!!! I bet anyone here could replace those gears in 30 minutes 2 hours at the very most. meaning getting out tools to the final putting everything away.
Hmm...Food for thought. I might just have to find me one of those machines now. Everything I've read says there's a plastic gear in the top of the machine that breaks. Feed dogs stuck are common with that bullet shaped piece that gets stuck and needs cleaned. I've only had it happen once and it was an easy fix. Shot it with PB blaster and it came free in about 10 minutes.
All my Brothers(I think except the Pacesetter) have the hook gear in a sort of sealed box. I don't think I've ever seen one wear out or break. I don't think any of mine are pot metal either, they're steel. Some of my Brothers have another steel gear in the top, just to the left of the hand wheel. Here's the thing about that gear - it doesn't need greased, it gets oil. Now some are going to disagree with me, but here's my thinking on it. If you follow the oil path on these machines, there's an oil hole directly above that gear. If I oil the machine according to the manual, that gear gets oiled. So why put grease on a gear that's gonna get oiled?
Cari