Heresy! Singer 635 Touch And Sew

WARNING! Rants ahead.

Okay in my defense this was an experiment.  I've been reading about the 'hack' to run the dual speed 1 amp, Golden Touch and Sew motors in 301/4xx/5xx machines and thought I would try it.  So I found this as a local pickup on Ebay.

Fighting down my bile I gave my offer and it was accepted. And actually the purchase was a pretty nice experience.  The owner, mah_7214, on Ebay turned out to be a very nice lady.  We had a pleasant chat in the parking lot of a Subway sandwich shop.  She sews, but doesn't work on machines.  She put this one up for sale when it conked out. She also has a 404 and a 401.  She had taken the 401 in to a 'sewing center' for service and felt like she got ripped off by them (see.. told everyone so!).  I told her I would be happy to look at the 404 and 401 when I get back from working at Philmont in the fall.  I also invited her to come to the charity sewing at the Simsbury library when it starts up again.  We probably chit-chatted for half an hour, socially distanced and wearing masks of course.  Then I packed up the little abomination and headed home.  I didn't have the heart to tell her the horrors in store for the machine.

When I got home, I didn't bother with 'before' photos.  Just started ripping it apart to get to the goodies inside.  Oh I did fiddle around with the button holer knob and immediately locked it up.  Oops.

The serial number batch was allotted in November of 1967. It's not a terribly low number in the sequence so it maybe be an early 1968 machine.  I was around five when this was made.  Man, thanks Singer for ruining my childhood.  No wonder Marge abandoned you guys.

This was the point where I thought, "Oh, I should take some pictures."

I already had it out of the case, feet off, bottom tray (held on by the feet) off.   I'm not really sure what the duct tape, two and a half inches from the needle, was for.  But yeah, duct tape on a Touch and Sew seems appropriate.

Taking it apart I half paid attention to what the 'issue' was.  The hook not moving.  Looking at the top internals it took me all of about three seconds to diagnose the problem.

Where, oh where did my plastic gear go?  You know I did see a post by a "sewing machine technician" on Amazon or someplace where they tried to say that plastic gears last longer than metal gears.  HAHA, bull dookie!  Plastic/nylon gears are crap, always have been, always will be.  People need to quit buying plastic machines.  Go find and good old (or new) all metal machine and quit giving money to companies who have no respect for you.  Maybe in a few decades they'll figure out that they need to make stuff that lasts for more than a year if they want to stay in business.  

If sewing companies are wondering why fewer people buy machines these days I think it has more to do with most people not wanting to spend hundreds of dollars on something that's going to break in six months and then the repair shop charging hundreds more and NOT fixing the problem.  Clean up your industry and quit making plastic trash, SVP Worldwide.

The sad thing is, there is a lot of cool stuff in this machine that is totally wasted because of the plastic gears.  The bobbin carrier is very trick, with its snap down retainer.  And the tension unit feels like a solid upgrade over the kinda wonky cludge they put on the 4xx/5xx machines.

Also I really like how the 'girder beam' casting of the rock shafts look.  Since the case for the 6xxs is pretty much the same as the 4xx/5xx casting I think I might see if the rockshafts will fit on one of those machines.

The more I looked at this thing the more annoyed I became with Singer.  I mean, sure the 600 suffered because they basically took the styled within an inch of its life 500 and turned it into a blah, eggshell, snoozefest without any real mechanical upgrades.  But then they did some serious updates that should have turned the machine into something that should have sent the 401/500 crying home to mama, like dual speed and the built in button holing. Sweet!.  And then totally borked it up with all this freakin' plastic. 

Why!? Seriously.  I mean cheap competition has always been a thing.  Someone was always  making knock-offs of the high end sewing machines.  Why did the top end guys suddenly cave and start producing crap as well?  Singer, White, Pfaff, and the rest of the high end guys were sought after because they were awesome machines.  Expensive, sure, always were, but they last forever.  People like that, even today.  That's why Sailrite is a thing.  

You want to make crap machines that sell by the gross, go ahead.  Just don't do it with your high end line machines.  Do it with the Stylist or whatever you want to call the junk line.

Another kind of wonky thing is that they put the plastic where it's going to be the most noticable.  Half of what you touch in your daily sewing on this guy is plastic.  The machine is like 95% metal, but when you sew on it you touch cheap feeling plastic.  That and having some of your most critical components made out of plastic just seems like Singer was trying to get their customers to hate them.

But just because I want the machine to be all metal doesn't mean there isn't room for plastic anywhere.  I really like this case.  Yes, it's plastic, but it's not like its purpose isn't served because of that.  It's a very nice looking plastic case that can take a bit of day to day wear.  Plastic is perfectly fine here.

Also I really like the cool 'dashboard' for the front controls.  Much slicker than the 4xx/5xx.

So yeah, plastic has its place.  And nowhere in plastic's place are critical drive components!  Like this. 

*Sigh* stupid-stupid-stupid.

On the bright side.  Those two pieces are all the gear broke in to.  So I did what any self respecting tinkerer would do.  I Kragled them back together.

I'll give it the night to cure and then reinstall it and run the machine flat out until it either explodes in a spectacular failure or I get bored trying to break it.  I'll update this post with a video if anything exciting happens.

But back to the point of the purchase.  I did get a dual speed  T&S foot pedal/PA motor.  

But then comes the problem.  Because this motor looks like a regular PA motor.  The video I saw mentioned the 1 amp version having three windings, and also it called out the 620/630/640/750 motors as the ones to use, not those of sub models.  So, since my job in life is to sometimes be a cautionary tale to others, I ripped the motor apart.  And sure enough.

That's a hard fail on the third winding.  Dangit!  Just a plain old wimpy PA 17-8 (I think .7 amp) motor.  Pretty much the standard throw away motor for any 6xx-7xx series that isn't a Golden Touch Sew.  pfft.

But hey, I still have the T&S foot pedal, and tomorrow I have a 750 arriving.  It's one of the models that is supposed to have the super awesome, best ever, motor in it.  It's coming without a foot pedal so maybe this one will work and it hasn't been a total waste.  We'll see.