1950s Phoenix 283 Automatic

This was given to me a few days back. It had obviously not been used for years. The round rubber belt was broken, but it was so neglected that this was the least of its problems. It was also missing the foot controller, but it came with manuals and pattern cams! I was up for the challenge and have loads of the original foot controller.

It was also missing screws for the door!

The excellent Wernard motor had some issues: The capacitor (inside the motor housing) was  original (the only one I've ever seen in these motors), and just under what you can see in the photo the wires were bare and rubbing against the motor housing.

Capacitor is the silver thing at the top.

Plugging it in would have blown the circuit breaker.
The motor had to be completely disassembled to remove the capacitor (which doesn't have to be replaced), and I also found that the field winding insulation was cracked in three places (one was at the motor housing). I carefully removed the windings, cut the insulation off, then put on some heat shrink insulation, which was shrunk with a soldering iron before I reassembled the motor.

The test revealed that the foot controller wire was damaged and broken, so was replaced with a new lead. New lead means an un-needed power cord. I Wired it up and tested by bridging the wires and plugging it in when it's all back together and the motor runs at full speed.
The rest of it was just cleaning. I dusted off the cobwebs and cleaned the exterior with sewing machine oil. All old oil was also removed from metal with sewing machine oil and chrome polished.

I'm not in a hurry with this. My dad likes to work on the cabinets so he's been removing the 60-70 year old shellac and will be replacing it with varnish.

I'll update when the machine's finished. It won't look like new unless I paint it (the finish is faded, discoloured and chipped), but it'll certainly look a lot better than the poor sad thing I started with this morning, and I know it will sew like a new one. Wernard motors are excellent and more powerful than Singer motors. Also, their foot controllers use wire resistance, which means that they never go out of tune.

After a good clean, she's looking acceptable.