Grab it!!!!!!!!!!!!

Less than $20????? I'd pay you that plus shipping too for a parts machine. My W&G seems to run smoothly until you put a piece of fabric under the foot to sew. After a couple of stitches it sucks the fabric down into the workings. Without fabric it does exactly what it's supposed to do -- it's only with fabric that there's a problem. I don't know what I'll have to do to fix this issue. *sigh*

I got mine for $40.00 and named her Abby. LOL Guess why!!!

Does changing the stitch length effect the "fabric sucking monster"

Steve, Nope. I am really stumped because she seems to work fine without fabric! The hook rotates and holds the thread like it should, I have the correct needles (replaced it too), everything moves smoothly and silently as the W&G is famous for. As soon as fabric is introduced into the mix, after only one or two stitches there is a grinding noise and serious sucking of the fabric which is then hard to remove (with a birds nest underneath large enough for a, uh, raven).

so, is it pulling the fabric or the thread to make the nest??

It's hard to tell, but I believe the nest is already there before pulling the fabric out -- there is too much under there to have happened just in the removal of the fabric. So maybe there's a larger issue with the hook or something, but it sure doesn't look like it when observing the rotation with thread but no fabric.

these machines are open enough I would just put fabric on there and hand rotate it one stitch at a time and observe what can be observed.

I don't want to hijack this thread but I tried to PM you with pics but can't upload them into a pmessage so here is what is happening:

Top thread -- two stitch lines (blue thread):
[ATTACH=CONFIG]421550[/ATTACH]

Now, for the bottom thread:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]421552[/ATTACH]

Hook assembly:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]421551[/ATTACH]

taking this to PM's..