1 of 1- royaltypewriter
- New Member
Offline 
- From: united states
- Registered: 06-9-2015
- Posts: 11
royal QDL/aristocrat, basket shift sticks
hello everyone, i have this royal aristocrat, which is basically a QDL from the 50's i believe. it has a basket shift
mechanism but it sticks and only goes down 1/2 way until its stopped by something. After examining what it was i discovered it was the ball bearings that the basket slides on to be the issue.
Apparently the ball bearings are supposed to slide down on their own, but these sort of stay up which causes them to hit a metal screw. I tried removing as much debris from that space and added some spirits and a bit of oil but the ball bearings still hit the screw which prevent the basket to slide all the way down when i press the shift key.
I hope someone has some advice, Im not sure if its light rust or lubrication (Ps: if i physically push down on the ball bearings with a screwdriver they will move down, and the basket shift will work fine, but if i press the shift key like 5 times, the ball bearings go back up again and they get stuck in the middle again)
thanks everyone
- SoucekFan
- Speed Champion
Offline
- From: United States
- Registered: 27-12-2015
- Posts: 480
Re: royal QDL/aristocrat, basket shift sticks
I had this same issue with a mid-50's quiet DeLuxe, and it was due to being dirty. I had to clean and reclean a ridiculous amount of times to clear it up. I used denatured alcohol, put it in a blunt tip hobby syringe and squirted it down the channel and the bearings, worked the shift mechanism, cleaned with long cotton swabs, repeated the process multiple times, and afterward applied some oil. While there could be a mechanical issue, I would try more cleaning first, as it can get extremely gummed up, especially if the original owner used erasers a lot. I would recommend exhausting the cleaning option before attempting disassembly.
