Greetings and welcome to the Forum

Going by your description of the problem and looking at my 1957 Travel-Riter S/N-TR214734, the first thing I would look at is the escapement rack. Is it swinging freely and properly engaging with the escapement pinion? Do the carriage release levers move freely and do you feel the spring tension when you pull either lever forwards? If you hold the space bar down, does the carriage still want to zing to the left?

A typewriter is like any piece of machinery, it has basic operating principals which should be understood and explored before taking it to pieces. As a licensed diesel mechanic, I can tell you that 85% of mechanicing is diagnostics and the other 15% is actually repairing. These machines are far too delicate to simply take to pieces and hope they will work again when you put them back together. If at all possible, isolate the problem before dismantling anything.

There are very few of us on the forum who can ever hope to reach the level of expertise of Tom The Typewriter Man, I know that I never will. However, we are all learning all the time, sharing our knowledge and experiences with typewriters and helping each other as best we can. Please keep us posted about what you find with your Travel-Riter. All the best,

Sky

skywatcher wrote:

Greetings and welcome to the Forum

Going by your description of the problem and looking at my 1957 Travel-Riter S/N-TR214734, the first thing I would look at is the escapement rack. Is it swinging freely and properly engaging with the escapement pinion? Do the carriage release levers move freely and do you feel the spring tension when you pull either lever forwards? If you hold the space bar down, does the carriage still want to zing to the left?

A typewriter is like any piece of machinery, it has basic operating principals which should be understood and explored before taking it to pieces. As a licensed diesel mechanic, I can tell you that 85% of mechanicing is diagnostics and the other 15% is actually repairing. These machines are far too delicate to simply take to pieces and hope they will work again when you put them back together. If at all possible, isolate the problem before dismantling anything.

There are very few of us on the forum who can ever hope to reach the level of expertise of Tom The Typewriter Man, I know that I never will. However, we are all learning all the time, sharing our knowledge and experiences with typewriters and helping each other as best we can. Please keep us posted about what you find with your Travel-Riter. All the best,

Sky

Hello and thank you for taking the time to answer my post. And if you can please excuse my spelling, I can see words are wrong but for some reason my spell checker is not working here.
I will try to answer as best I can. OK the carriage is under spring tension and I can hear the gear that meshes with the toothed bar (top of the pinion shaft?) on the underside of the carriage turning when I move the carriage, The carridge just shoots back across under tension from the spring, nothing holds it as soon as I take my hand off of it it goes off to the left to its full extent. The carriage release levers seem fine, when pushed back the carriage moves silently ( no sound from the cog (pinion wheel?) on top of the escapement)  Looking in from the underside at the escapement, the wheel that I believe is supposed to be held in place by the rocking mechanism ( that releases the carridge one space at a time) does not seem to be under tension and does not lock up against the rocking mechanism (escapement loose dog,fixed dog?), it did briefly when I was poking about but soon stopped again. I have just looked up into the escapement again and I think that just behind the escapement wheel I can see a part of a small spring hanging loose, I am guessing this is supposed to hold a dog? to lock the escapement wheel to the pinion shaft. Do you think this might be the issue? I am looking at the exploded diagram for a 1960s Monarch for referance as it is the closest I could find. The escapement rack appears to move freely but only just contacts with the tip of the escapement wheel on the loose dog side, which as I said is 'limp' although if I up-end the machine and move the carriage sometime the escapement wheel and the pinion shaft can lock momenterily, my guess is that gravity is doing the job of the loose/broken spring.
P.S. The serial is GR270754 which I referenced at another website and that gave me 1957
Thanks again for the help.
 

Hi Again Pierssy

You don't live too far from where my brother lives in Great Malvern. Google Maps indicates from The Forest of Dean to Luton is about a 3 hour drive through some of the most beautiful countryside in England. If you have wheels, money for petrol and some free time, take your typewriter to the professional and have it set up properly.

If this won't work for you, see if you can post some pictures of the loose springs and we'll see if we can figure out exactly what's what and get you going that way. As for the spelling, typewriters don't have spell check, so don't sweat it. When you're typing on a typewriter, you just have to keep a dictionary close by and that's your spell check. All the best,

Sky

I've tried a few ways of getting pictures on to the forum. PhotoBucket works, but you always get 'Proudly hosted by Photo Bucket' on every image. Imgur wouldn't give me a jpeg or similar so the link didn't work. Tiny Pic works well and is easy to use - believe me, if I say it's easy to use then anyone can use it . I hope this helps.