Hello again. I took @Ego's great advice and tried Offerup. Wow, craigslist is so 2004. A graveyard of old listings that stay up forever with unreasonable pricing. Offerup has much better stuff that is priced to move. I bought this sewing machine. I know, I have five machines now. I couldn't resist. I was dying to get into a Husqvarna. I had to see why my mom and her friends all swooned over this machine back in the day. I got this for $40. It was jammed up inside.
These were high end machines in the 1970s. Kind of a status symbol with suburban mom's. I remember my mom and her friends name dropping their machines like they were cars. This model cost about the same as a good used car back in 1977. We're talking $500 in 1970s dollars when a new Vespa costed $500. I really wanted to see what made these so special over a Singer or Kenmore. Turns out it was the tight tolerance bearings. They give it a solid feel and a very consistent stitch. They were designed to be oiled for life. So they had a tight fit that would not leak oil and never required the ubiquitous dropper other makes required. The problem was the oil dries up after 40 years and glues the tight fitting bearings solid.
So the trick is to take the machine apart, clean the bearings out with carb cleanter. Relubricate with high quality light synthetic oil - I used 0W20 Mobil 1 left over from my Honda oil change.
Removed all the access panels to get at the guts.
Motor had smoke coming out of it. Turned out to be a capactior short. I was wondering if I should replace it but I realized it was a filter capacitor to eliminate RF interference with AM radios and analog TV broadcast.
So 1977! Not needed anymore so I clipped it out.
All of the bearings and pivots were glued together with solidified grease. Solvent + light synthetic oil + wiggling got them free. I couldn't turn the machine with the motor. So I hand cranked impatiently till I broke the handwheel. Finally I got the friction low enough to rotate the machine with an electric drill hooked to the mainshaft. Once I was able to see the parts in motion I knew where to focus my solvent spray.
This is the most I had to strip the machine down to. I finally got it to rotate freely but it still wouldn't sew backwards or zig zag. The mechanisms were jammed. I found each one by operating the knobs and observing what worked and didn't work in the machine. Wiggling, spraying and oiling freed it all up and made it functional. I was ready to totally disassemble the machine but that would have been daunting given its mechanical complexity.
I cleaned up and lubricated the motor. A mess in there. I operated the machine with a hand drill while I repaired the cracked handwheel.
The handwheel cracked inside. Go figure the prior owner and me tried to crank a frozen machine. I glued it here with JB Weld. Probably one of the greatest fixit glues with utility up there with duct tape and baling wire. Amazing stuff, a must have for the workshop.
Back together under drill power.
Everything runs at this point but it tangles up the thread under the bobbin and hook carrier. So I knew it is catching the top thread and that means timing is close but somehow it snags down below and makes a big ball of thread down there. I disassembled the bobbin and hook a dozen times sanding and filing away all the burrs caused by needle strikes. This will jam the thread down below. Still no luck. It still made a big hairball of thread down below.
Then I realized the tolerance between the hook driver and hook are too close and the thread cannot get through. I was not sure how these are set on a Husqvarna but I took it apart and found these two shims that set the clearance. On a lark I took them out to give the thread a little more space.
Boom! it works! First stitches made using power drill power.
And there it is all done. Just need to polish the paint a bit. I marked up the finish with solvent and need to polish it out. I'm going to use automotive polish and give it a good shine. There are a few cracks in the plastic parts that also need to be filled and glued in. I cannot wait to get it sewing under its own power. Fun stuff.
Makes me wonder about the history of this machine. It was cosmetically clean and didn't have much wear. Probably owned by a person who didn't sew much. The cracked handwheel had superglue residue from a prior repair attempt. It had a swatch of test fabric on it pinned to the needle plate indicating it had been tested and put away long ago. However what I don't understand is the shims. A repairman or factory assembler put those in and they put the machine out of spec. There was a big ball of thread tangled in the hook so somebody had tried to run it before it became frozen and tangled it up. The backstory would have been interesting. As it was, a young gal just wanted it gone out of her closet. I didn't ask too many questions. She did say they took it in to a repairman and he refused to fix it. Probably he'd have to charge more than the value of the machine.
Six hours of work and a lot of thinking. YouTubing. Searching for old scans of the service manual. Works great now.
This vintage machine collecting has made me remember my mom. These machines were bought by husbands after marriage and were treated like engagement rings among my mom and her friends. The richer the husband the more expensive the machine. They spent more time bragging about their Pfaff, Bernina, Elna, Necchi or Husqvarna than actually sewing. It was like a status symbol in the living room. God forbid if your loser husband bought you a Singer or Kenmore or worse, one of those "cheap" Japanese models. Mom was such a poser. When I think of it she really didn't make much stuff. Mostly she told people how good she was at making stuff. When I went through her old machines I found out they were all out of timing and needed service. None worked. I felt really sad for her. She didn't want to pay for service and she was afraid to keep asking my dad to pay the serviceman because he'd start asking questions about why she needed that thing. She kept buying more and cheaper machines and breaking them as her life went on. It seemed to be an identity thing. When she married dad got her a Necchi, then a Pfaff, then a Singer, then a Singer Tiny Tailor which is basically a kid's toy. None of them worked by the time I got to them. By the 1980s it was cheaper to get a new machine rather than repair. And now we are here.
It's all from a different time. Mom had a college degree from UCLA in "Home Economics". They literally went to college to learn sewing, cooking and home decor. She had a lot of not so serious college friends. I guess there were fewer paths back then. A different time with a different set of status symbols. Makes you think about lifestyle choices changing over time. Sounds ridiculous now.