What did you learn today?

I can pull  a motor off of a Singer 201 in about five minutes now.  That's because I have done it so many times.  I know a fair bit about older Kenmores, too.  I don't know squat about newer machines, but the last two Taiwanese made machines I was able to at least take apart to get to their innards.

But the Viking that Andrea and I worked on is totally different from any machine I have ever worked on.  Except that, like almost all of the others, its major problem was being dirty and gunked up.

Or so we thought.

The reverse mechanism on this machine was stuck.  It would not work at all.  The machine worked in straight stitch mode when Andrea tested it, but the reverse button would not work. 

She managed to get the front off of the machine and when she did she found a pin (not a sewing tool, a machine part).  She figured out where it belonged and put it back.  But the reverse button just did not work. 

Today she figured out how to get at the back of the machine, which entailed a whole lot of removing this and that, including taking the motor and the mother board out of the machine.  We cleaned it, discovered that the reverse button was just stuck and were thrilled to get it all freed up and working.

Then we cleaned around the cam stack and discovered this.

The machine is on its side.  We had cleaned all the gunk from this part of the machine and we were moving the stitch selector knob through its stitches.  When it wouldn't go any further Andrea investigated and  found this fracture.

Well, the machine is now a very nice straight stitch only machine.  We put it back together and tested the stitch.  It works rather nicely, even in reverse.

What did we learn?
That we can take a Viking apart.
That indeed, the problem with the reverse mechanism was gunk
That you should evaluate the weakest link first, before putting a ton  of work into a machine.

This machine is for a friend.  So the time is irrelevant.  We had fun and were very proud of ourselves for figuring out the dismantling of this Viking.  I must hand it to Andrea.  She was persistent, patient and determined.   I would have given up early on in the project.  She claims she would have, too ,if I hadn't been here to help.  What did I do?  I held the stupid flashlight.  She was the brains behind it all.