EvieRaven

Yes, that's correct.

JoeJr

There should be two screws holding the light plate on, under that is the bracket holding the needle bar. There are pivot points on which this bracket turns to move the needle bar to zig zag. Oil or heat these pivot points. There is also a rod connecting this bracket to the gearing underneath the curved piece on the top of the machine. When you move the ZZ stitch width lever you should see another bar slide in the curved piece; that whole curved piece swings back and forth when the machine is cycled and the rod connecting to the needle bar swings with it. Oil or heat under and around this area. By "heat" I mean either a hair dryer or a heat gun. Because you've already oiled you could start to smoke that oil, so be careful and don't use heat where there's a smoke detector.

OurWorkbench

Thank you, Joe. Most of my machines have dials, rather than levers for zigzag stitches. It sounds to me that if the machine will sew straight in the different positions that it is something besides the needle bar. Maybe something not connected properly??? It seems strange to me that the lever will move the needle position, but not zigzag.

Janey - Neat people never make the exciting discoveries I do.
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EvieRaven

Thank you both for the suggestions. I'll try to record some video today if I have time and show exactly what I'm seeing when I turn the hand wheel, and what moves when the lever is moved ect.

EvieRaven

Ok, so I found this video of a Singer 237, and it has a similar mechanism for the zigzag. After watching that, I believe that my machine should move in a similar way. In order for that to happen I think that it must be missing a gear/should be engaged with the drive shaft in this area, which would rotate a cam under the sliding piece allowing it to move forwards and backwards (zigzag). In other words, the entire slider should pivot. Basically the part I've drawn an arrow to should probably connect to those teeth right beside it, but there's a gap here, and clearly that isn't the right type of part that would connect anyway.

JoeJr

I am going to take a guess here, the part under the curved piece and down, in the picture, from the gear on the main shaft, looks to me as if it had a plastic or rubber gear on it which obviously is no longer there. I say this because the surface of that gear, with all the small points, is what I've seen inside of other rubber/plastic gears, the purpose being to keep the gear from slipping on the shaft.

In my non-expert opinion the likelihood of finding a replacement gear, if it's what I think, is so statistically insignificant that we can call it "zero".

AlZilla

The biggest problem is that "Universal" name. It makes it very hard to search for parts. There almost has to be other identical machines out there with a different badge. If you could ID one you may be able to find that gear. I'd call it the vertical shaft top gear, on a Singer.

AlZilla

No, in fact that's not what I'd call it. If it were the equivalent to the top gear, the hook wouldn't turn. I guess I was sleepy. There still has to have been other machines made that would be the same.

EvieRaven

I wanted to add some more info to this old post because I never really came back to it. I also had a DM that I missed.

I ended up joining a Facebook group for vintage Japanese sewing machines, and I found a couple helpful posts from others. One was an old post (4 years ago) from someone who had a similar looking machine with the same broken part. They replaced theirs with a brass gear. One person with the exact same machine who was able to take photos inside the top of theirs which confirmed I did in fact have a completely broken/missing plastic gear. I ended up saving some photos from those posts (attached).

Someone in the comments of the older post gave a part number, but I don't know for a fact that it is the part that the op ended up using. However because it was all I could find, that part number was #3692-169S. This part is for listed online as for Kenmore 158 machines, but the JA 58 number I found on my machine (below) is also used on some Kenmores?

Most of the places I looked for this part online said it was sold out or no longer available, but I did find one store that still had it listed, and I attempted to buy it. After about a month of no contact and no part in the mail, I got a refund through PayPal.

That's where my energy for this project started to dry up. I also started to worry about taking my machine that far apart, even though I *should* be able to do it. I know it does do a nice straight stitch right now and I don't want to mess that up.

However having some time off for the holidays I decided to give this another look. I started looking up sources for parts again. I ended up buying a part off eBay that may or may not be correct. I will try to remember to update when I actually make some more progress.

The JA number on the bottom of my machine is JA-58 80670 I thought this might be helpful info.

Catmomma

Hello
Do you still need the 3692-169S gear? If no 'S' it won't fit.