Sounds good. Thanks for the input on price. I'll try and see if he'll do a trade deal or go down on the price a tad. (a significant tad, I guess)

on a similar note, and I hope I'm not de-railing this topic too much, but how much should one expect to pay for a Flexowriter or a functional Teletype? This would be for a desktop model, not those huge Teletypes (like the Model 28).


 

I'd have to see that paper injection system in action- it looks super cool!

Strange. I'm assuming you're taking prices off Criaglist too, eh? 

Regardless, I'm scrapping the repair. The metal band now appears to be torn in half, and I'm not experienced enough to be meddling with the control ribbons. Too bad too, as I would have been able to fix up the rest of it. 

Well, it would seem that there isn't a huge amount of knowledge for Selectric repair, so I might take it upon myself to tear down and attempt to put this machine back together. It would be a very good idea to see if I can't learn a thing or two. 

I feel bad that all I have to talk about is a Selectric typewriter, but I'm working on getting some other typewriters too- I just find that selectrics are commonly given out for free around here. 

Anyway, a nice fellow offered me his Selectric II, and I took it primarily because he had with it a handful of elements, some tape, a manual, and most importantly, it was a dual pitch. 

Sadly, this one had seen it's last day, as after opening it and removing the safety inserts I saw some pretty serious damage.

I'll spare the nitty gritty, but essentially the carriage return cable had slipped off the spool, and gotten caught up in the clutch mechanism. The motor caught it while spinning, and wound it all over the place and nearly snapped it against the corner of some metal framework.
Also, one of the metal bands for controlling the element had slipped off it's wheel.


I'm wondering if there are any people here that know a fair bit about Selectrics, as I would really like to have this one working. My current II is in mediocre shape while the broken one is a dual pitch, black model in fantastic condition. 
Now I would assume that the carriage return mechanism, or at least the cable, can be pulled from one and given to the other- is this true?
If so, how difficult would one find this to be? 


Thanks! I can post photos if necessary.

As A first question here on the boards, I'd like to find out why my Selectric II seems to have a different keyboard, as compared to the one seen in the official Selectric II manual.

The difference is not in functionality or in placement of keys, but rather the characters on the keys themselves.
Here's a list of the keys, and what is on the keys on my Selectric. 
Margin release, looks like ◄-|-|-►
Nothing on shift key, no trace of there ever being anything writte on it (and no wear on other keys)
Express backspace, looks like ◄-◄-
Backspace, looks like ◄--

And generally if it's a "function" key, it has arrows on it rather than characters. 


Does anyone know what this means? A different model of keyboard or a customization option, perhaps? 


Thanks!