Originally Posted by irishrose

My teenaged son's favorite: "Do not pass when opposing traffic is present". His comment: If someone needs to be told that, they shouldn't be driving.

Amazing work, Joe. If the aforementioned son is McGyver, Jr, then you are the senior.

Originally Posted by jennb

You crack me up. I guarantee that if it had been myself and hubby in your shoes he'd have grabbed the same thing to use! You would love one of the local guilds down here. They schedule their quilt shows in the convention haLLC so that there's their show in one hall, and a gun show across from it in the next hall. You see alot more happy couples at that show than I've ever seen at any other show!

fwiw personal responsibility has gone so far out the window in tho's country we might never see it as the norm again. Sad.

Originally Posted by J Miller

OK, here's a little story and some tips. I hope you enjoy it.

Sometime towards the end of last year I picked up a Singer 66 red eye treadle from GW here in Spfld. The poor baby had been de-treadled and converted to electricity some many summers ago.

When I got it the cord block, foot controller, and light was there, but the motor was gone. The plug for the motor was still in the wiring block with about 3" of severed wire extending from it.

So I decided to perform reconstructive surgery and return this machine to a treadle. (Note to those who might want to do this, treadle parts can be a PITA to find.)

First I'll pulled the light and wiring out and made one heck of a mess. The insulation on the wiring was crumbling like and old cookie. Bits of it everywhere. The old latex insulation does not last well. Under it was aluminum wire. Ugh, I hate aluminum wire.
The cord set, light, and foot controller were carefully put in zip lock back to keep the junk from spreading throughout the house. (Sometime later I rewired the cord set, light and foot controller and use the it along with an extra motor for testing machines.)

Now that I had the treadle and machine free of electrical debris I set about the task of restoring her to the proper method of propulsion.

I needed:
Spoked hand wheel
Treadle foot plate
Pitman shaft assembly
Big wheel and parts
Dress guard
Belt shifter, spring, and screw
Various nuts and bolts.

I went to the LSMG first, nothing.
Then I posted WTB adds in a couple other forums I was on before I joined this one, and got some of the parts.
But try as I might I could not find a genuine Singer pitman arm assembly or a spoked hand wheel or a belt shifter set up.
So I ended up ordering the spoked hand wheel from Sew-Classics.
The pitman arm assembly, belt shifter and spring and screw came from ...... Australia.
All these parts are Chinese reproductions. (More on those later)

The singer parts fit just fine for the most part. I had to make an adapter for the rear belt guide. Apparently there is more than one kind and the one I got was wrong for this treadle base. I made it fit. Then the dress guard set to close to the wheel so I had to use a spacer to make some clearance.

I had assembled the treadle parts by the time the Chinese parts came. With them came the head aches.

TIP 1: Chinese parts will not fit like the original American parts. Count on it.

The pitman shaft assembly was nicely made. It has a feature I haven't seen the originals, a spring loaded tension devise to keep the slack out from between the ball and seat part. The threads on the top of the shaft mated with the original bearing threads perfectly too.
However ( yep, here it comes ) the big nut on the bottom was a very loose fit in the treadle plate. Too small in diameter and too tall. So there was no way I could make it a tight fit like it needed to be.
I had to shorten the big nut and shim it with aluminum from a soda can to make it fit.
Works great though.

The next thing was the belt shifter. Oh lordy, this piece should never ever been allowed out of the factory.
The two halves of the mold it was cast from did not match, creating a big ridge all the way around it. Then the hole was not drilled right, and counter sink for the screw head was non-existent. I had to finish manufacturing that part. (Remember, they came from Australia. Sending them back would have cost more than the parts did.)
The belt shifter spring fit perfect, but the knot heads at the Chinese factory put the wrong threads on the screw. It was perfect in every way but the thread pitch. Arrrrgh!!!! I had to borrow the screw from my other treadle. Eventually I found one in a box of things at the local SMG's place.

With all that done it was time to assemble the new spoked hand wheel and put the belt on. Well, that's easier said than done. Sew-Classics product info has the statement: "Some fitting may be required." That's actually a fib as fitting is definitely required.
TIP 2: When the Chinese or any metric country tries to duplicate the American inch threads they either use our equipment or many times will attempt to use something metric that is similar. A lot of times they'll round up or down to the nearest millimeter when they make the part. This creates a lot of headaches when you try to fit an otherwise useable reproduction part to an original machine.

The Chinese hand wheel would only fit half way on the shaft of the 66 #2 machine. OK, so I'll make the hole bigger. Um, Joe, just how you gonna do that? I then tried the hand wheel on my 66 Treadle #1 and it barely went on, and bound up. I tried it on Rusty the rusted 99K. It fit there. Talk about tolerance variations.
How to fit it?? That was the 64 Dollar question.

I was standing in front of my messy work bench searching for something to use to polish out the shaft hole on the wheel when my eye landed on a shiny yellow 20 ga shot gun shell. Hmmm, yellow ones are too small. I finally found a nice new plastic red 12 gauge shell and put in in the hole. ALRIGHT! We can do this.

TIP 3: A loaded plastic 12 gauge shot gun shell wrapped in 600 grit wet or dry sand paper is a really good tool to use to polish out the ID on a reproduction hand wheel. Put some oil on it to keep the debris from getting every where. It has to be loaded because an empty hull will collapse. There is no danger of it going off, so don't worry about that. Once done, stick it back in the box and your DH won't know the difference

So it took me a couple hours to get that hand wheel fitted to my #2 treadle. I alternated stroking the shell in and out spinning the wheel around it. First one way, then take the wheel off, flip it around and do it some more. Test fitting it often on the #1 treadle so I didn't go too far. The #1 treadle has a slightly larger shaft than the #2, so once it fit the #1 I knew it would fit the #2 and could stop.

Once the hand wheel was on I put a new belt on it, oiled it up and we are in business.


TIP 4: Don't get in a hurry or impatient when you're looking for parts. I looked for months before I ordered the Chinese junque. About a month after I had the machine all done with the reproduction parts in it I had a real Singer spoked hand wheel, and I'd seen the other parts I needed on eBay. :>(
The originals are out there, don't bother with the reproductions. They aren't worth it when you have to fit them.

Joe