Connecting Rods Reassembly–Part 1

First of all, let me apologize for the long delay between posts.  Between work, making 3 baby quilts, and a much needed vacation, I haven’t had much time for blogging.  The next month should be a little better so I’m going to try to post at least once every week for the next 4 weeks.  Now, back to Ms. Rusty.

The Singer 201 has two connecting rods –  one with an end cap and one that is forked.  This post will cover the forked connecting rod and the next post will cover the other rod. 

Below is a photo of the parts used to reassemble the forked connecting rod.  The rod itself (top), the feed regulator (bottom), the slide block (small rectangle), the hinge screw and the hinge screw washer. 

Upright Arm Shaft Reassembly

Today’s adventure was pretty straight forward for a change.  I decided to install the upright arm shaft, which is the shaft with gears that connects the lower gear shaft with the upper gear shaft.  A picture is below and a link to the disassembly of this baby is here.

The upper gear is the smaller one, and that is the one that I took off to insert into the arm of the machine.  The photo below shows the “flat” of the shaft where one of the set screws of the gear should rest against when it is reassembled.

If I haven’t mentioned it before, I’m lightly oiling all the parts with regular sewing machine oil before assembly.  This helps the parts slide together easier and adds a little protection from rust.

Here are photos of the bottom of Ms. Rusty and they show the “before” and “after” shots.  It’s easier to show pictures than try to describe where to insert the shaft.

 

Now here is a photo of the top end of the shaft, as seen through the arm side cover opening.

 

What this photo is intended to show is that it is not possible to attach the top gear to the shaft without first moving the gear on the horizontal arm shaft out of the way.  That is why I didn’t worry too much about exact placement when this gear was initially installed.  After the horizontal gear is pushed back a bit, then the upright gear can be put on.  This can be a bit awkward for one person to do since you have to push up on the shaft while aligning the gear over the hole, and then tightening the screw.  To solve this problem, I propped up the shaft at the bottom with a small box of toothpicks and then it went pretty smoothly.  An alternative would be to have a helper or a third hand, but I had neither at the time You can tell the gear is in proper position on the shaft when, using the words of the Singer Adjuster Manual, the end of the the shaft is approximately flush with the face of the gear.

The next step is to bring the gear of the horizontal arm shaft and put it in mesh with the gear of the upper arm shaft.  It helps to have a pair of bent nose pliers for this step to pull and hold the horizontal gear into place to tighten the set screws.  The photo below shows the completed assembly.

Then I rotated the shafts at the balance wheel hub to make sure everything was turning smoothly and nothing was binding.  The adjusters manual warns that the gears should not be pressed too tightly against the bushings as this could “retard the free rotation of the upright arm shaft”.

When I was sure everything was working the way it should be (at least as far as I could tell), I applied grease to the gears and did a few more rotations to work the grease into the gears.  I want to make sure those babies are ready for the big show when the time comes!

Next time I’ll tackle the connecting rods.  Oooooo – what fun!

Reassembly of Thread Take-up Lever

Today’s post cover’s the reinstallation of the Thread Take-up Lever Assembly and the Needle Bar Link.  These parts attach to the end of the horizontal arm shaft that we installed in the previous post.  Fortunately, these are pretty easy to put back on.
The thread take up lever goes on first.  A key land mark on this piece is the flat edge on the post for the set screw.

HAS Reassembly

The Horizontal Arm Shaft, or HAS as I like to call it, is the next part I put into Ms. Rusty. Ms. Rusty’s driveshaft has 5 pieces. There is a 6th piece, which is a bushing near the needle bar area, but I couldn’t manage to remove that during the disassembly process so it is still in it’s original place.
The 5 parts that were removed are shown in the next photo. The long bar at the bottom is the HAS and the four part at the top, from left to right are the stop motion flanged bushing, the feed cam & feed lifting eccentric, the bevel gear, and finally the needle bar crank.

Upper Bushing and Needle Bar Post Reassembly

Today I will show you how I returned the upper bushing for upright gear shaft and the needle bar post to their proper locations.  These were the last two mechanical parts to be removed from Ms. Rusty before she was cleaned and stripped many moons ago (click here for a flashback).
I started with the upper bushing for the upright gear shaft.  Notice that there is a mark at the top of the bushing that “points” toward the hole in the side of the bushing?  This hole will face toward the back of the machine when it is properly placed into position.  Also note the slightly flat side of the top of the bushing?  This will face the side where the set screw holds the bushing in place.