bkay

I posted this several months ago. Somehow, this magically resolved itself. I went back to the machine and it worked correctly. If I fixed it, I don't know how. I've been using this machine since.

Yesterday, I changed the cam in it. It has always had the regular zig-zag cam in it. I've used it a few times and it worked just fine. I couldn't get the other cam to work correctly, so I decided to do something else. I put the zig-zag cam back and adjusted the tension to work with it. The tension was too lose and the stitch length too short, so I adjusted it again. I got busy trying to figure out how to mount the ruffler attachment and didn't sew anything.

One of the neighborhood kids wanted me to repair his jacket, so I took the ruffler off and started to work on his jacket. The stitches wouldn't work. So, I got out some scrap and started to test. It skipped stitches, spaced stitches unevenly, broke the thread, left pieces of thread in the bobbin area and left loops on the bottom, like the tension was loose. I re-threaded it repeatedly, changed the needle, changed the tension, changed the thread and changed the bobbin several times. I even got a bobbin from my 201 that I knew was vintage. All those actions changed and improved things, but did not solve the problems.

Finally, I watched and listened very carefully. It's not sewing exactly straight. The needle will occasionally zip a tiny bit to the left. After about and inch or so, the bobbin area starts to rattle. It's not loose, though.

Any ideas where to start? Any help would be appreciated.

The square sample is where I started. The rectangle was where I quit.

bkay