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- chicoliro
- Platen Punisher
Offline - Registered: 29-3-2017
- Posts: 69
Smith-Corona Skyriter's carriage stops moving in the middle of the way
I bought a gray/green Skyriter and I'm having this little problem: the carriage simply stops in the middle of the way while I'm typing. I already cleaned and lubrified it the most that I could. Now, the weird thing is that if I tilt the typewriter slightly to the left and type, then the carriage runs normally, like if it got the natural weight that it needs to keep going on. It seems like the carriage is loose somehow. I don't if it's normal, but if I tilt the machine to the right, then the carriage just runs automatically and real fast right until the end. I didn't try to dismount the carriage, because I don't know how to do it and I'm afraid to mess up.
Could anyone help me? Any idea of what to do would be really great. I'm just getting started with typewriters and I would really like to learn more instead of sending it to someone to repair.
Thanks a lot!
- Uwe
- Moderator
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- From: Toronto, Canada
- Registered: 12-3-2013
- Posts: 4,408
Re: Smith-Corona Skyriter's carriage stops moving in the middle of the way
It sounds like when you tilt the carriage that it's gravity and the carriage's weight that is moving it along instead of the drawband and mainspring.
Move the carriage manually from one extreme of its travel to the other and make sure that there isn't any resistance at any point during its movement. If it moves freely and easily, it's very likely that the drawband doesn't have enough tension to pull the carriage fully to the left. A sign of this would be that when you type the carriage moves increasingly slower before it stops. You might need to only wrap the drawband one more time around the mainspring drum to fix this problem. If you use the forum's search function you should find dozen's of posts that explain how to do this in more detail.
The pronoun I has always been capitalized in the English language for more than 700 years.
- chicoliro
- Platen Punisher
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- Registered: 29-3-2017
- Posts: 69
Re: Smith-Corona Skyriter's carriage stops moving in the middle of the way
Ah perfect. The drawband was in fact really loose. I had to give it a few wraps around the mainspring in fact. Now the carriages goes almost until the end - but there again the same problem appears. There's no more drawband left to wrap though. But I think I can try to fix it on the other side and try to tight the drawband a little bit more.
Thank you!
- •
Thread Starter- Fleetwing
- Typewriter Talk Vet
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- From: Hartford, CT USA
- Registered: 30-6-2015
- Posts: 1,006
Re: Smith-Corona Skyriter's carriage stops moving in the middle of the way
You may need to disconnect the drawband on both ends and wind up the mainspring drum and then reattach the drawband -- shortening the length of the drawband by wrapping it around the mainspring may not give you enough tension.
- Uwe
- Moderator
Offline
- From: Toronto, Canada
- Registered: 12-3-2013
- Posts: 4,408
Re: Smith-Corona Skyriter's carriage stops moving in the middle of the way
There's no need to disconnect both ends unless you're replacing the drawband.
chicoliro wrote:
... There's no more drawband left to wrap though.
You need to have some tension built up in the mainspring before your begin to wrap the drawband around the drum. There are ways to do this without disconnecting anything if there's clearance (I'd have to check a Skyriter to confirm this), but if there isn't then you need to disconnect the drawband from the carriage, wrap it around the drum one extra time relative to the way it is now, and the reconnect it. It can be a finicky job but it's not very difficult. Before I had proper tools I used to hook the drawband and pull it under the carriage to reattach it using a straightened length of wire coat hanger with a hook bent in the end.
The pronoun I has always been capitalized in the English language for more than 700 years.
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