melissa.mcl

Hi all, I just inherited all my grandmother's old quilting stuff and dropped $20 on a used sewing machine Singer Merritt 1802 (alas, I did not get her nice machine). I sat down to learn to sew, and ruh roh! The machine is not great (surprise surprise! it was $20). I'd love to repair it instead of just spend more money and create junk. The problem is: when the sewing machine is on the largest stitch setting, the fabric barely moves forward, and it creates super tiny, tight stitches. When it's on any smaller stitch setting, the fabric sits in the same spot, not moving. When I throw it in reverse, the fabric doesn't move at all no matter the setting. When I turn the wheel and watch it slowly on the largest stitch setting, I can see that the feed dogs are not moving the full span of the slots in the plate - they could go more. And on the smaller settings, the feed dogs just go up and down - there's no circular movement that would push the fabric forward. I'm quite sure the pressure foot isn't the problem - it makes contact with the feet no problem.

I already took the plates and bottom cover off, cleaned out the whole area beneath the needle, and started to noodle around in the larger area under the engine too. There's a lot less going on over there. I haven't opened up the engine (yet). Nothing immediately stands out as a problem. I removed a ton of lint, and some of the old lubrication has hardened, beaded up, and fallen down (kinda nasty tbh...). There's a long arm that goes from right below the motor over to the feed dogs and seems to turn it. It's held in place by 2 plastic clamps (one on either end), but they both look to be in decent shape. One does seem to have a lot of wiggle room, but it might be designed that way?

Anyways, if anyone has tips on this model, or has seen this in a different machine, please let me know! Or, any links to service manuals would be great. I can't find them online. I'm not bringing it to a professional shop - it was $20, and I'm broke anyways. Any other advice is welcome.

I don't even know how to sew, and yet here I am... if you can't tell, I like to tinker!

bkay

"and some of the old lubrication has hardened, beaded up, and fallen down (kinda nasty tbh..."

I'm not a great sewing machine mechanic. (I finally gave up and took my last one to the shop.)

I believe I would be trying to remove some of that old lubrication. It takes 90% alcohol, lamp oil (kerosene) or several other solvents to dissolve it. I've used solvents with q-tips, strips of old t-shirts, dental tools, tooth picks, etc. to get the old old out. It will certainly gum up the works. I once had a machine (Singer 401) that would not move at all. It took me about 2 weeks to finally get it moving. I just used solvents to clean out the old "varnish".

bkay

melissa.mcl

Thanks for the tip! I can definitely work to clean out the old gunk, but I bet that it'll need fresh lubricant after, right? Any recs on what to use? It looks like they used different types of grease on different mechanisms. Some is creepy gold stuff under the feet, some is nasty grey under the feet, and some is deathly black out under the motor... lol.

quiltedsunshine

Sounds like the previous owner put grease where it shouldn't be. You may be able to soften the old gunk with heat from a hair dryer.

Tri-Flow Superior Lubricant is a great oil for older machines that have frozen up.

melissa.mcl

I fixed it! It was not gummed lubricant (I didn't think it was), but a failed bushing. There's a long metal shaft that pushes the feed dogs forward and back. There are bushings at the end of that shaft that it rotates within. On mine, the bushing under the motor area had failed, causing the shaft to wobble as it moved, rather than stay fixed. This made the feet not move forward and backward as much as they should. The other was intact - but it would be worth checking both.

There's a little plastic clip that holds both the ends of the shaft in place. Unscrew the one under the failed bushing, clean out all the gunk, and take the silver metal piece out of the black shaft. This is the piece the bushing belongs on.

We fashioned a new bushing out of electrical tape. The end piece needs to be able to move freely inside the bushing, so we turned the tape sticky-side-out and made a round that fit just over the end piece. Then, we wrapped the round sticky-side-in until it was the same diameter as the end piece's little stoppy bit.

We put some sewing machine oil inside the new bushing and where the shaft and end piece connect, and re-oiled the intact one as well. It works perfectly now! I bet the tape will fail again, but it only took about 15 min to make a new one, so I say "good enough".

Putting this solution here in case some other poor soul with the same problem finds this thread. I know I googled to no avail, but found someone else with the same problem on Reddit. So I'm sure there are more out there!

OurWorkbench

Congratulations on figuring out a work around. Thank you for posting your solution here.