Help me with old grease in Singer 9510
 

There is old grease caked on the needle bar of this machine. I went to oil it and eww, yuck! My question is, should I replace it with grease or smo? I don't know if grease is standard for this model or someone had a great idea.

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Yuk. I have seen several machines with that gross grease, but usually not on needle bar. My instinct would be oil only.

Are you sure about the model? I'm only finding a 95-10 which is a black industrial.

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

It's one of the newer, plastic made in Taiwan Singers. I bought it before I knew what I was doing. the good news is it was cheap, and it will make a good present for one of my little new sewists!
Here's a picture of it so you can see how newish it is, even though the top is off:
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And here is the label:
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Ah, dyslexia rears its ugly head once more: it's a 9015. Well, dang.

I believe that in the 70's ?? Singer put out some models that didn't need oil..a new selling point..this may have been one of them.
You didn't say why you thought it needed oil. If it is running smoothly and not clunking, grinding or squeaking, I would leave well enough alone. Even if you were to get in there and wipe out all of that grease, what's left in the clearances for the needle bar would not allow regular SMO to get in there. If you are adamant that you need the grease gone, it would require taking a good portion of it apart to clean each piece...I wouldn't..I would leave well enough alone.

I've seen that in a few Singers. It turns into something like wax, and freezes up the machine. Sometimes we have to break it off in chunks, with a small screwdriver. I imagine that the grease is along the upper shaft and in the gears, as well. The machine probably turns very slowly, if at all. And I'll bet you can't get it to make a zig-zag stitch. It's hard to remove when it hardens.

Sometimes hair dryers will loosen up old hardened grease. I'd hate to run it as is.

OK!! I used rubbing alcohol and small stencil brushed, because they have nice stiff bristles and I got almost all of it off. Maybe all of it, by now. It had a sticky feeling film for a while, but I think that is all gone. Sounds pretty good now. I haven't taken the bottom off, yet, and I want to to see if I can see under the shuttle, because there is some of that crusty grease poking out around the edges.
Here's that "After" picture we all anticipate:
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Sorry about the resolution. When I transferred it from my phone to my computer, it really affected the resolution.

Thank you. It looks a whole lot better. Good luck with getting the rest of it cleaned up.

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

That looks great!