You are not logged in. Would you like to login or register?



18-9-2017 19:24:46  #1


Newbie jumps into the deep end on a damaged Olympia SM9

Just received a nice looking but (as I later discovered) problem plagued mid-60's SM9 a few days back. Carriage was dragging/sticking badly through the middle third of travel, but fine at each end, and tabs in the same middle travel area didn't work at all, while tabs on outer thirds of carriage travel worked fine. I have many years of camera repair and old-time vacuum tube radio repair experience, but I've never delved into a typewriter, so what the heck... the worst I could do is screw it up even more, I figured. So - I downloaded the excellent Olympia SM general repair PDF file from the Typewriter Database folks, and jumped in the deep end of the pool.

I'll admit (probably to the horror of some) that I power-washed the machine in my shop driveway before doing anything, blew it out with medium pressure air, and air-dried it for a couple of days. I've done this with complex mechanical assemblies for many years, and it works fine if you are careful. I use a small, relatively low power electrical pressure washer, and never get too close with the nozzle. 

First thing I discovered in removing the "shell" was the two rear rubber shock mount feet were ripped in half and the rear frame tabs were bent. Clearly the machine has been dropped on it's back while cased. So I put them back together with some Goop Plumbers Adhesive, which I've found over the years to be some very good stuff, bent the frame foot tabs back straight, and swapped the front and back feet, figuring the rear shock mounts get the most stress any time the machine is upended, since that's where 2/3 or 3/4 of the weight lies. We'll see how that goes over time. Next, I knew the carriage had to come off, and I'll admit that had me a little intimidated at first. Luckily, the directions and diagrams in the SM manual worked just fine. After the carriage was off I discovered two things: First, someone had "adjusted" the rack bar of the carriage's rack & pinion drive with a heavy hand, leaving the middle with a curve or hump of almost 1/8" compared to each end, thus causing the middle travel binding. I feared the rack was ruined and I'd never get it straight again, but lo and behold the instant I loosened the two screws on each end of it, it sprang back straight again. Gotta love that German steel! I made a guess at a proper rack height and half-tightened the four mounting screws, figuring I'd need to adjust it after reinstalling the carriage. As for the non-working tabs in the center 1/3 of the carriage travel, I was astonished to find that all of the tab stops for that middle area were simply missing! Why, I don't know. I have no idea where I can get tab stops, but if I can find a parts machine some day I'll replace those. In the meantime, I simply will live without tab stops between about 30 and 50 on the carriage travel. All tabs and clears elsewhere work just fine.

Finally, I cleaned everything up, lubed the bearing tracks and bearings VERY lightly with a touch of white Molybdenum paste (I've used this stuff for years in guns and cameras, and it stays home and doesn't "travel" when warm). The trickiest thing was holding the nylon bearing races steady in the correct star track holes with one hand, while simultaneously sliding the heavy carriage & rails back in to their tracks without messing up the nylon bearing races. However, after a couple of tries and some discussion with Olympia engineers ancestors, I got it done. Of course, when tested, the space bar wouldn't move the carriage, and manually sliding it back and forth made a terrible grinding noise, indicating the rack and pinion weren't quite meshed, so I loosened up the rack mount screws slightly and worked with each end back and forth until the carriage ran freely left and right, didn't make noise, and also didn't slip when hitting the space bar. Then I re-attached the main spring drive, tightened everything up and reinstalled the machine in the cabinet. It work absolutely great now in all respects, with the minor exception of no tabs in the middle area of carriage travel. Anybody have a sack of spares? I need about 30 of them. 

All in all, this has been kind of fun, and a great learning experience. I have another SM9 and an SM8, as well as a Hermes 3000 to dig into next. All work but have their own miscellaneous little problems, but now I'm looking forward to doing them. Lot's of learning to do yet, but typewriters are turning out to be fascinating machines to work on.
 

 

18-9-2017 20:41:17  #2


Re: Newbie jumps into the deep end on a damaged Olympia SM9

Wow -- that's quite a debut. Congratulations! Welcome -- looking forward to hearing more of your adventures!

 

18-9-2017 21:19:24  #3


Re: Newbie jumps into the deep end on a damaged Olympia SM9

After almost 40 years of fairly high speed\touch-typing on computer keyboards beginning with a Radio Shack TRS-80 in 1979, and with the last real typewriter I used being an IBM Correcting Selectric II 20+ years ago, I was totally shocked at the long powerful stroke required on a 60's manual portable, even such a well-designed machine as this Olympia SM9. I'm suddenly back to 10 wpm, gonna have to learn to type all over again!

     Thread Starter
 

18-9-2017 21:52:00  #4


Re: Newbie jumps into the deep end on a damaged Olympia SM9

...And re-locate where the apostrophe is!

 

Board footera

 

Powered by Boardhost. Create a Free Forum