Thank Goodness. I have my mother's 401A and it sews like a dream. When I inherited it, it sewed nicely for my guy, and it probably had never been serviced. and my mother sewed up a storm at night. Well, after Gilda's day at the spa she is even better than I remember from using her more than 50 yrs ago. She's a keeper.

A repairman once told me to always sew with a machine after oiling it - to never put away a freshly oiled machine. Something about distributing the oil before it's stored. Makes sense when you see the clumpy dried up oil in some of our vintage beauties.

Noob here. Can someone explain to me exactly what the "cure" did for the machine? Was it just ungunking the oil that had hardened because of non-use? Thanks!

I have a 1924 Singer 128 that I had serviced (it had been stored for many years unused) and was sewing nicely, but every 5 or 6 stitches, the thread would make a little loop underneath. I took it back to the guy who did the servicing and he couldn't figure it out at first. Then he decided the needle plate needed to be replaced. The surface of the plate had multiple scratches in it from broken needles, and the needle hole was no longer round. He said that because the needle hole was now too big, the loop formed by the thread as the needle comes back up was catching on burrs on the inside edges of the needle plate. He put on a new needle plate, and she works fine now.

I am so happy that my Pfaff repair man also knows what he is doing when I bring him one of my old Singers. He has fixed my (repainted) purple Featherweight, it wasn't put back together properly after it was painted. He is very good with the old machines, he even rewired the original plug that goes into the body of the machine.
Sharon in Texas

It didn't "ungunk it it warmed the motor up and got the lube worked in. When you do the maintenance on say a Feather weight motor you always want to run it hard for a few minutes to distribute the new lube in the motor.
HelenAnn

Thanks for the explanation!

On the Singer 500/401, often I pull the motor out if it is not turning at all. Then I drop in a bit of oil and turn the geared shaft back and forth until it seems to move easy. It does work in the oil. Some times those motors get dried up oil in there and they don't want to run - I've had a few that sounded like a Mack truck. If it isn't frozen up, put a drop of oil on the bearing on the motor shaft then run the motor with the clutch dis-engaged.

I've also seen that you will need to drop some oil under the bobbin carrier and run it pretty good. I even tilt the machine forward and back - some times lay it on it's side to work in the oil. Be careful nothing hits on the table, your lap or where ever you work.