Most of you will recall that Kevin recently picked up a very rare vintage Apex washer, one of only two known to club members. After years of neglect it needs a lot of tlc to get it going again. So after the initial clean up, since very little happens on a vintage machine without a functioning timer, Kevin decided to start there. From the outset, after years of sitting in a barn the timer was stuck solid. No movement was possible in either direction when the control knob was turned. Well, since I was to blame for letting him know about this washer in the first place, I figured I should offer to help sort out some of its problems. So back in November(I can’t believe it’s been that long) Kevin brought me the entire control panel with the timer attached so I could play with it.
With the timer separated from the control panel and the two side plates removed from the timer body, it became obvious that the problem had nothing to do with the timers various cams. Apart from the dead spiders and a little debris, things looked very normal in here.
Since there wasn’t anything wrong with the cam assembly, the next step was to pull the timer motor/escapement assembly off of the cam housing. The silver colored Philips screw is one of three that needed to be removed for that.
With the removal of three more pressed steel nuts, the top plate was free to be removed from the escapement. If you ever have to do this, do it slowly and get a good look at where things go as you’re taking it apart. Once the top cover is lifted off, things are pretty well free to move around in there, and they will. The more carefully you observe things at this point, the easier reassembly will be. As you can see, there isn’t much to see here other than a bit of coagulated grease, so I began to clean up the various little components figuring that when I got to the problem child it’d be obvious.
Here’s the trouble maker. This complicated little assembly of gears and springs allows the timer to drive the gear one way, while turning the control knob the other way will cause the small center gear to push the spring loaded pawls out of the way and slip past. This allows you to turn the cam assembly to the desired position without driving the escapement. These little pawls were being held firmly in place by old dried out lube that had literally glued them down. It took some effort, but they were freed up and new lube was applied.
Here the timer motor/escapement is reassembled and mounted to the cam assembly, minus the escapements protective covering so I could watch it all work. Unfortunately, when I connected it to power it just sat there. Nothing happened at all. Damn! Now what?
A quick check of the two timer motor terminals with an ohm meter revealed an open, so the darn motor was bad. I looked around a bit for a new motor, but for some reason vintage Ingraham clock motors from the early fifties are kind of hard to find,(imagine that) and when you do find them, the folks that have them are so proud of them that they wont let them go for less than one hundred and fifty dollars. Holly @#%&* batman! What do I do now?
Well, I though about it for a while and tried to conjure up a way around this problem. I had another timer motor that looked like it might work, but it would require some modification of the escapement to get it mounted properly, and then I had an added problem in that I had no idea what the correct rpm should be. The stampings on the Ingraham motor made no mention of rpm. So if the new motor speed didn’t match the old one, Kevin’s Apex might end up running faster or slower than it was intended to. Rather than risk screwing things up I made the only choice I could. I’d just have to repair the original motor. With that in mind I began to disassemble it. This little nut is all that holds the cover plate on.
[this post was last edited: 1/31/2013-13:15]
With the cover plate removed you can see the motor assembly sitting in the housing. To get it out of there so you can work on it, the plastic covered power lead adapter needs to be removed as shown. You can see it sitting beside the motor. Now the only thing holding the motor in place is gravity.
With the inner motor housing removed from the outer housing you finally get a good look at it. The top cover that holds the reduction gears is staked in place, so those stakes will need to be driven back to get the top plate off. This photo was taken during reassembly, but you get the idea.
With the coil removed I began to unroll the wire onto a cardboard tube, thinking if I got lucky and found the break quickly, I could solder it back together and reassemble it.
WRONG!...........As I unrolled the wire I found break, after break, after break. It quickly got ridicules. Each piece of blue tape represents another break, so I gave up and ripped all the wire off the spool. [this post was last edited: 1/31/2013-13:07]
I was going to have to start over with new wire. But since I needed to know how much new wire to roll onto the spool, all of the old wire was carefully collected and weighed, along with the empty spool. The scale used was more than up to the job, and sensitive enough that when an overlooked piece of wire several inches long was found on the table and placed in the tray, the scale had to be readjusted for the extra weight.
Using a micrometer, the thickness of the old and new wire was measured. Once it was clear that I had the correct new wire for the job, the process of rolling it onto the spool began.
This is what the setup looked like. The battery for the drill motor needed recharging so this picture was taken while I waited for it to finish. Since the wire was thin enough that it was hard to see, the magnifying glass made it possible to monitor the progress. The wire was guided onto the spool by gripping it loosely between my thumb and index finger.
Nearly complete. The stakes that hold the motor housing top plate in place have been reapplied, and all of the remaining parts to the assembly have been laid out to make sure I haven’t misplaced anything. Now would be a good time to apply power to the motor and see that it works.
