I'm a bit stymied by my '64 Royal Parade. 

With the caps lock on, vibrator lifts appropriately for both red and black settings. Solid black, and solid red (except for fractions which just dip into the black at the tip).

With the caps lock off, in lowercase mode, the vibrator hardly comes up at all. Only the bottom half of characters print.

On this machine, everything in the vibrator assembly is attached to the carriage, so stays in relative position throughout the carriage motion. The only thing that is fixed to the frame is the universal. 

Looking from the bottom, in caps mode, everything looks good. The ribbon universal pulls the vibrator drive bar, which drives the vibrator pivot arm right to the stops in both modes. In lowercase, the ribbon universal hardly pulls on the drive bar at all.

Since it's the only variable in carriage motion, I suspect something about the positioning of the universal linkage to what I'm calling the drive bar. There is a slot in the drive bar to accommodate the fixed universal linkage when the drive bar rises in shift mode. 

Caps position:


Lowercase position:


With the screw removed to expose the drive bar slot:


Here's what I notice is that in caps position, when the universal linkage rotates to the front of the machine (left in the pictures), it's at the end of the slot and pulls immediately. In lowercase, the linkage is at the top of the slot and first goes down to the caps position before pulling, wasting most of the travel. Looking at the slot and that flat edge on the left of the slot in the lowercase position, I wonder if the linkage is supposed to stay up there and pull on that edge. On the other hand, even if it were higher in the slot, the motion of the linkage is 45-degrees down.

There appears to be no adjustments at this end. Forming doesn't seem like the right answer as the bends

Pete, how is the feel of the SM7 relative to the SM3 and SM9? Is it closer to the SM3 or SM9 (or its own unique self)?

This is the way my SG-1 and SG-3 are. All the right margin does is engage a line lock. You can space, tab, or use the carriage release to blow right past it. It takes a little getting used to, but the SGs are so nice that I don't mind this little quirk.
 

Good point, Pete. Your self-restraint is wise and admirable.

I ventured briefly down a small rabbit hole looking at auto paint colors from the early 60s as inspiration for a non-standard palette for my grey Futuras. Would love a nice orange scheme, but it would clash with that red Royal logo.

Cool! I like the contrast of the second one. Is there a color for the ribbon cover that's slightly less yellow, but equally light?