When I first saw this machine for sale, I told myself I had to have it, I mean, look at those fins! A quick turn of the hand wheel indicated a little resistance in spots during the cycling of the machine, and in my youthful exuberance ,and ignorance, I figured it was nothing a little oil wouldn’t fix (youthfulness relative to sewing machines, not so much for anything else).
The clean up started with multiple oilings, and still resistance, but at the same spot in the cycle of the machine.
I had to think about what to do next, and Leon’s and Janey’s suggestions with another machine
Problem with a Singer 66
started me looking in the nose end, lots more oil, some judicious (I thought, anyway) pry work with the screwdriver, a hammer and wooden dowel may have been used...still resistance.
It was time to actually think about what I was doing and try to isolate the problem area. I started by disconnecting the vertical connecting rods, one connecting the top and bottom main shafts, the other connecting the top to the feed dogs. I will admit I was more than a little nervous working on all this, I’d never been this aggressive taking apart a machine. The bottom mechanisms moved fine on their own, the top still had resistance. So the needle bar had to be disconnected, once done the top main shaft spun freely. It turns out the connecting rod marked with the single arrow in the front end was bent somehow. And there was no clear indication at all on which way to bend it to make it straight, so it was lots of tweaks with the pliers, the marks are evident on the piece. Week after week this went on, and at one point I just pushed the machine to the back of the workbench for months (I know Janey has one of these and I was going to ask her if she wanted it for parts). After a few weeks with no other machines to work on, I finally moved it back out front and started the whole process over again, and finally with a slight bend with the pliers I thought I’d done 10 times before the parts went back together with no binding in the needle bar and top main shaft. The double arrowed part in the picture is the one that would not slip on without binding. I reconnected all the other disconnected parts, checking for resistance or binding after each one, until it was all back together. And it even sews stitches!
I think the only lesson I learned here is to think twice, or more, about how badly I have to have any machine that I see, no matter how great it looks.