It could be very dirty and gummy, and not able to close all the way--I've seen this condition more often than not.  You might need to just clean it out a bit.  If not, see where the springs are--you may need to re-tension them.

Fleetwing wrote:

Thanks -- no springs whatsoever that I can see.I think the design depends on the pivots being not too loose.

 

Set the vibrator to the red position and manually jam to typebars together near the type point so the vibrator stays in the raised position. If you look at the bottom of each pivoting arm you should see the end of a spring. If you don't you should at least see a small hole where the spring hook connects. If the spring is missing that's the root of your problem; the spring keeps those pivoting arms vertical - closed on its stationary arm. In fact, if you load a ribbon and don't close the arm, just using the vibrator will cause them to automatically snap shut.
 

They do stay open even though they are spring-loaded because there is a detent that holds them open. That's why I mentioned that if you leave them open and then press a key, the vibrator motion will automatically snap them shut. Keep in mind that this is a torsion spring and not a tension spring, which maybe is what you were looking for.

This is the system used on every one of the five or six Futura 800s that I own, which cover the production run of the model. If you have something different, please post photos because I'd be very curious to see what else was used.

Detailed instructions for posting photos can be found in the FAQ thread within the Type Talk sub-forum.

I took a look at the photos you emailed me, and you have the exact same vibrator as the one I was describing. Unfortunately the angle of your photos didn't show the area of the vibrator that the spring connects to, so I can't see if it's there or not. However, if those two movable gates are flopping around on their own it's probably safe to assume that your spring is either broken or missing. In my previous post I mentioned a hole, which was a little misleading - sorry. It's more of a hook than a hole that the spring connects to the gate arm through. I also should have mentioned that you can see more of the vibrator if you use the shift key while the typebars are jammed and the colour selector is in the red position.

The spring is mounted in the middle of the vibrator at the very bottom (I'll see what I can do about a photo later on). If it was there you would see a fine wire inside each of those two hooks (one per movable gate).