Hi UWE

Indeed what you have is a broken detent spring. Lift the mechanism out of the housing and look at the left side. Just below and behind the left ribbon holder, you'll see a screw holding a small circle of metal onto the side of the frame.

This is the other end of the broken spring you found in your unit. The 'V' shaped part of the spring detents into the 'W' shaped notch in the reverser linkage just below the spool holder. Hope this helps and all the best,

Sky

Well I had a look under the hood, and have to admit it's still not 100 percent clear to me.

I assume this was the screw you were talking about? I'm sure it was because the round metal plate it was holding in place had nothing attached to the other side of it.



This was wear I got a little confused. I removed the screw and small bit of metal and looked on the inside of the frame and examined the ribbon control mechanism parts that are  in the same, and for the life of me couldn't figure out how the part would work. Even with the broken off piece in place there doesn't seem to be anything else that it would come in contact with. Here's a view from the inside which might help explain what I mean:



And something else. The break is quite clean, so I'm not sure what type of shape the part originally was in. Initially I assumed it was something like this:



However, when I looked inside the machine it seemed that would do absolutely nothing, so then I concluded it was shaped like I have it in the photo below. If it is, then I assume this is the part I'll need, even if I can't at the moment figure out how it works. Maybe it'll make more sense with the ribbon cup removed?

Apparently my sausage fingers missed the letter 'a' in carriage. But that's part of the charm of using a typewriter, isn't it?

Last edited by Uwe (14-3-2013 19:17:25)

I absolutley HATE typing on the skywriter. Too flimsy. Yes, the carriage return lever is wayyyy too small.

Retro-Z wrote:

Uwe, I'll take a look at the Skyriter I have sitting around and see if I can get some pictures of the same areas you show.

Many thanks, but there's no need. This thread is over two years old now and I have added several Skyriters to the collection since I posted this issue. TypewriterGuy bumped the thread to the top of the list with his comment, and as is often the case, most don't realize how old a thread is when that happens.
 

TypewriterGuy wrote:

@Uwe I felt like looking around at the old threads yesterday, and decided to add my opinion.

I get that; my point was that those who reply to a thread reviving post often don't realize that it's a zombie thread. This was a prime example of that. I'm assuming that Retro-Z didn't realize that I had originally posted my question over two years ago.