Dropped on the handwheel problems?
 

I have been working hard to bring back the Singer 403A I picked up last month but am starting to suspect more serious problems.

I believe the machine was dropped on the handwheel. There are some good deep chips in the paint and when I rotate the wheel there is an obvious swervy rotation. Nothing in rubbing so I had hoped it was only the handweel being bent.

My question is for the serious tinkerers. Because the needlebar was frozen I didn't get a chance to see the swervy thing and after freeing it up, it has gotton a bit easier and easier to move but not entirely. What else could I look at to decide if internal parts are bent? Is there a good way to figure this out? I am hoping one of you that may have been through this process before has a tip that could help me decide if it's toast and should be parted out, or if there is something I could do to make this little machine useable once again.

There are lot of videos on the 403. I would check them out and go from there. Very similar to the 401. Vince Acurri has one video where he's repairing the 401. Good luck!

Chances are it's just the handwheel that's bent. Singer main shafts are pretty robust from what I've seen.
Rodney

If it was dropped on the hand wheel end, a bent main shaft is a possibility but more likely the shaft just got moved a little to the left. If you've got the machine all cleaned, oiled and freed up but there's still a bind at one spot in the rotation, it's one or the other. Here's what you need to do but I'll probably muck up the details. A block of wood up against the left end of the shaft behind the face plate and give it a whap with a hammer. Not too hard. That should move the shaft that tiny bit to the right to free the bind if the shaft isn't bent. I've done this twice, once it worked and once it didn't because the shaft truly was bent.

Cari

We had one in the shop that had taken a hit to the handwheel. And it was so bent-up that we couldn't even get the handwheel off. That one ended up as "unrepairable." Are you able to get the handwheel off of yours? That might help determine if the wobble is from the shaft being bent or if the handwheel is on crooked.

Smacking the shaft to nudge things over, sounds like a good idea.

I CAN get the handwheel off and everything has been freed up but it's still not moving very freely. Perhaps a bit better each day and that may be all it takes but I am beginning to wonder. When the handwheel is off the shaft appears to be fine but I can't rotate it rapidly enough to tell if it's bent. The machine's movement is still stiff enough that I have the motor out and on the table until I can get things moving better.

I'll give the smack a try. That makes sense, so it's worth trying in my book. Thank you.

I have a perfect looking 401 with a bent pig nose - stitch selector. I think I took it out once and bent it back but it still wants me to use the donor machine and swap the parts. I don't know if you could swap out parts or not. Some times parts machines happen.

LOL "pig nose"! It could end up being a parts machine and I'm ok with that. Lord knows I will likely find 'nother one that needs parts!

Once the sun comes up today I'll go give it a good tap and see if that changes it's nasty disposition. ;) It could still be that it just needs daily working so it'll likely hang out on the side of the workbench where it'll get a turn or two each time I'm out there.

Cari, I decided to have a go at it today. I turned the handwheel until I found the inside sway, then put a wood block against that part and gave it a tap...and another, and a bit harder....turned tapped, rapped, smacked,....and just kept a workin' on it. For anyone following this with interest...I didn't pay a lot for this machine and was fully aware I could be effin' it up good! But it worked! The handwheel is less wavy and I can spin it with just my fingertip!

Now to get back to getting it fixed up yay! Thank you!

There are sections in the service manual about binding and what to check. I will mention that sometimes the bind is happening below and usually hard spots in my experience have been something "eccentric" or lobed needing attention.

This is assuming that none of the shafts are bent or dislodged. The reason I mention all of this is that it's getting better as you go along. A bent shaft wouldn't be resolving itself.