If the basket gets 'caught' only at the very bottom of its movement, you could adjust the uppercase alignment upwards. That way, the basket wouldn't travel as far down. Obviously you'd have to adjust the lowercase alignment to match.

drowth wrote:

If the basket gets 'caught' only at the very bottom of its movement, you could adjust the uppercase alignment upwards. That way, the basket wouldn't travel as far down. Obviously you'd have to adjust the lowercase alignment to match.

That may be the ultimate fix, even if it is not actually addressing the root cause - who knows - I will have to check the available travel on the adjusters.  I have a pessimistic vision of me doing all this and then finding it still sticks when the spring is attached properly, but what you say seems to make sense.

beak wrote:

OK folks  - you may laugh, you may groan, you may 'face-palm', but I don't care; the shift is 'working' again.
While taking yet another look at the shift assist spring to check it was at full tension, it slipped out of its top retaining hole.

OK, talking about face-palming I just notice that you refer to the spring in the singular above whereas taking a quick peak inside an SG-1 conveniently placed I see two springs...?  Your original post refers to springs" so maybe this was just a typo.

I am by no means judgmental of your fix. I think it is a wonderful fix.  I was thinking of a Royal Empress I had whose basket was jammed on the bottom of travel - merely turning the machine over freed it so I take it it was cocked somehow - and in fact it had but one spring when there should have been two. It worked fine with one once the basket was freed and you might not otherwise have noticed the spring count was not up to spec if it had not bottomed and jammed in shipping. I guess the philosophy was that if you were in Irkutsk, say, and it would take three months to get a replacement spring it would keep working on the remaining one until help arrived. You want to be able to keep working in Irkutsk, so long as the vodka holds. 

I just was kinda sorta thinking that your Olympia might have had the same problem, but I see I was wrong, and it apparently has its full complement of springs.

TypewriterKing wrote:

Had a thought: I saw the picture of where the spring was attached--onto a post up above. Is there by chance an eyelet under that post?

As Beak explained in post #21, the spring had slipped out of its adjustment bolt. The underside of the bolt that you see in his photo has an oversized head with a hole drilled through it, and the end of the spring loops through the hole.