Nerys

I tried to post picture but failed. My old Brother sewing machine bought in the mid 80s was decades in storage. The bottom tension was never any good. I oiled it and found these bits loose inside as in picture link above. Repair is quite expensive here and is almost price of buying a new cheap price sewing machine. Looking for some advice?

QuiltnNan

If you visit the Help forum, there are lots of sticky threads on how to get a pic posted.

QuiltMom2

I'm not terribly familiar with Brother machines, but it looks to me like you are going to have to get a new machine. Is that a broken plastic gear in your picture? Try to find a used vintage machine. They can easily be maintained by you, once cleaned and oiled, they're usually good to sew almost anything and depending on the model, they are relatively inexpensive. Good luck and let us know what you end up with.

juliasb

Wow! this one can be a tough one. What year is this machine made, do you have any idea? If you need something for daily sewing and quilting if the price for repair is close to or exceeds the cost of a new machine you may want to put this back away and get a new machine for the time being. I hope someone else can give you a hand on a repair or what happened that you have so many lose parts.

Nerys

[ATTACH=CONFIG]617165[/ATTACH]Broken off bits sewing machine. Its a Brother VX-880 made in Taiwan on metal plate of machine. My S/O bought it in the mid 1980s. But I do not know of what year it is. It never worked well problem with bottom/lower tension. I do not know from where the bits fell off as they were loose inside.Inside is clean no rust. The outside went quite yellowish I posted about that quite some time ago.
I usually do handsewing but my osteoarthritis is also in hands wrists so that is why I think maybe try for machine sewing again. Allthough I fail at it several times for several reasons.
To add to the dilema besides sewing machine I have been eyeing a die cut/embossing machine for some time and that would be about same expense as a cheap new sewing machine.
I am in EU and just a maintenance servicing cost 65 euro/72 usd and if they have to see for repairs a quotation is more money added depends on what they find how long it takes to see what needs repairing at what cost.
A cheap new sewing machine costs here 102 euro/122 usd.
Buying second hand is very risky, as is buy as it is at your own risk.

OurWorkbench

You didn't mention which model Brother you have. It appears from Is there an easy way to remove yellowing from old Brother sewing machine? that is a mostly plastic machine. Plastic is easily cracked, chipped and broken.

I would agree with QuiltMom2 that if you could find a complete vintage all (or mostly all) metal machine machine that can be easily maintained, that would be would be the way to go. It might be difficult to find a good used machine where you are. Here, one can sometimes find an older model traded in at a sewing machine shop.

Looks like you posted while I was trying to compose. I do understand about risky buying used.

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

Nerys

Brother VX-880

pennycandy

This is just a guess but it might be the cam stack https://www.sewingpartsonline.com/pa...g-machine.aspx . The cam stack is the piece that allows the machine to make different stitches.

Any plastic parts in your machine are on their last stitches. I too had to make the decision to not fix my machine I bought in 1980. If you check my signature it's listed as RIP Singer 1036 because it was difficult to say good bye to my old friend.

donna13350

Are you even sure those parts ever went to your machine? I've looked at lots of pics and can't find where the plastic piece and spring would go. The part on the upper right doesn't even look like it goes to any sewing machine I've ever seen, and on the bottom is a c clip..they are pretty generic and used on a lot of things, but on sewing machines, they were used to hold the long stainless steel bars inside your machine, but it still doesn't look right to me, it looks too thick for a sewing machine c clip, but that just may be the pic.
Does the machine rotate with the hand wheel? Have you tried to sew with it?

newbee3

if you never really liked the tension on it I would just get a new machine