JoeJr

My apologies to Shakespeare for the Title. I have not been actively acquiring machines for a few years now, but have kept my hands in SMO cleaning up machines for neighbors and friends. Another friend, recently a widower, was cleaning out and sent these machines my way.

The 99 has already been apart, and it was really stuck, rusty, on the underside. I have not finished servicing the motor and testing the light, and have not tested the machine. Hopefully I set the hook/eye timing correctly. The presser foot presser bar spring was broken into 2 pieces, but I came up with a "fix", nudged into thinking about it by someone on the other board.

The Montgomery Ward is a nice little 3/4 vibrating shuttle machine. The base is in really nice condition. You can see from the picture of the motor that it was left plugged in for 30 or 40 years; I believe this will be fixable more easily than it may appear (the magic of heat shrink tubing).

The Kenmore is a 158 something or other, external motor, weighs at least as much as I do, I know this because I tipped over trying to pick it up and carry it.

I wrestled with the idea of just parting out all three of these, but just couldn't do it. We'll see how it goes.

QuiltMom2

You should be singing "Back in the saddle again!"

sschick

Wow, that is a beautiful 99K. The finish and decals look like they are in great shape.

Shari

bkay

I agree. That is a great looking 99.That is my favorite set of decals on a 99.
bkay

ptquilts

Yep, when people find out you sew, they want to give you their unwanted machines. At one time we had over a dozen, including two treadles and one cabinet. We made sure they all found good homes.

JoeJr

Behind the 99 in the picture is the top cover, you can see the stains on it, not sure yet how to clean it; off to the left is the base, stripped of the flaps of vinyl that were hanging on to it. The base was in multiple pieces upon arrival, I have glued it back together. I think I will sand it and stain it, it won't match the top but that will have to be OK.

Here's the MW motor with the wiring recovered, it did spin up without catching on fire, so I'm happy about that. I had to disassemble the motor almost completely to pick out melted plastic and get the heat shrink tubing all the way in. In the upper right corner of the picture is the broken, brittle drive wheel, not sure about a fix for that yet, it has a different hub from others I've worked with.

OurWorkbench

Nice job on the wiring. I don't know if your hub is different from these



but supposedly the 1/2" inside diameter of heater hose will work on both.
You can buy Gates heater hose 28410 by the foot - I got mine at O'Reileys.

JoeJr

It is similar to the one on the left in your picture except there are two spikes, opposite each other, mounted on the outside rim and extending inward that pierce the wheel, to hold it in place I assume. I tried some spare drive wheels I have, but they were too loose on the motor shaft.

I have a piece of soft rubber around it right now, with a couple of bobbin tires over that (because the factory drive wheel had such a large diameter), I need to clean the rest of the machine before I remount the motor, I also have to redo the wiring to the wall plug and to the foot pedal.

toogie

That old Singer is beautiful! I’ve never seen a MW before but the Kenmore is familiar. Someone I know had it.

JoeJr

Update: The 99 sews well, but I don't have the case ready yet. The MW bobbin winder doesn't work, but the machine is cleaned up, waiting on some electrical components to finish wiring, not sure how I'm going to wind a bobbin.

The Kenmore is a 158.12260, a left homing, high shank, ZZ machine, except for the ZZ part. In the picture you can see a rubber gear sitting loose. That gear belongs where the blue arrow points but was up where the yellow arrow points. It took me only about 3 hours to figure out what was wrong (after lots of oil and lots of heat trying to loosen up whatever was stopping the zig from zagging); this gear makes the machine zig zag.

So now it's a straight stitch with infinitely variable needle positioning between the left and right end points.