EvieRaven

Yes, that's correct.

JoeJr

There should be two screws holding the light plate on, under that is the bracket holding the needle bar. There are pivot points on which this bracket turns to move the needle bar to zig zag. Oil or heat these pivot points. There is also a rod connecting this bracket to the gearing underneath the curved piece on the top of the machine. When you move the ZZ stitch width lever you should see another bar slide in the curved piece; that whole curved piece swings back and forth when the machine is cycled and the rod connecting to the needle bar swings with it. Oil or heat under and around this area. By "heat" I mean either a hair dryer or a heat gun. Because you've already oiled you could start to smoke that oil, so be careful and don't use heat where there's a smoke detector.

OurWorkbench

Thank you, Joe. Most of my machines have dials, rather than levers for zigzag stitches. It sounds to me that if the machine will sew straight in the different positions that it is something besides the needle bar. Maybe something not connected properly??? It seems strange to me that the lever will move the needle position, but not zigzag.

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EvieRaven

Thank you both for the suggestions. I'll try to record some video today if I have time and show exactly what I'm seeing when I turn the hand wheel, and what moves when the lever is moved ect.

EvieRaven

Ok, so I found this video of a Singer 237, and it has a similar mechanism for the zigzag. After watching that, I believe that my machine should move in a similar way. In order for that to happen I think that it must be missing a gear/should be engaged with the drive shaft in this area, which would rotate a cam under the sliding piece allowing it to move forwards and backwards (zigzag). In other words, the entire slider should pivot. Basically the part I've drawn an arrow to should probably connect to those teeth right beside it, but there's a gap here, and clearly that isn't the right type of part that would connect anyway.

JoeJr

I am going to take a guess here, the part under the curved piece and down, in the picture, from the gear on the main shaft, looks to me as if it had a plastic or rubber gear on it which obviously is no longer there. I say this because the surface of that gear, with all the small points, is what I've seen inside of other rubber/plastic gears, the purpose being to keep the gear from slipping on the shaft.

In my non-expert opinion the likelihood of finding a replacement gear, if it's what I think, is so statistically insignificant that we can call it "zero".

AlZilla

The biggest problem is that "Universal" name. It makes it very hard to search for parts. There almost has to be other identical machines out there with a different badge. If you could ID one you may be able to find that gear. I'd call it the vertical shaft top gear, on a Singer.

AlZilla

No, in fact that's not what I'd call it. If it were the equivalent to the top gear, the hook wouldn't turn. I guess I was sleepy. There still has to have been other machines made that would be the same.