I am having trouble getting the trip rack to raise on my Vandercook 4. I removed the trip rack to access the cylinder eccentric adjustment today. I removed the rack while the carriage was in the middle of the bed. I put the rack back together afterwards and now the rack won’t fully raise when the roller at the bottom hits the trip wedge to send it up into print mode. I thought this was related to the tooth position of the gear and the rack, but based on the wear on the parts I’m pretty sure it’s going back together the same way it was. I cannot manually rotate the eccentric collar and carriage tie bar very much, as I saw recommended in a similar post from quite a while ago where Paul recommended using a pin wrench to manually rotate it. When I do this, I notice the carriage seems to move a small amount as though I were adjusting the eccentrics.
I wonder if the adjustments I made to the cylinder eccentrics are keeping the cylinder from dropping into print? As a side note, I had a hard time adjusting my cylinder. I used the feeler gauge and got everything feeling good in the middle of the bed, but there seems to be some wear closer to the feed board. I did the best I could but there is a slightly tight spot as the cylinder is maybe 6″ from the feed board. Is this an indication that it’s all too tight, and maybe causing my trip rack issue too?
Fantastic! Happy printing.
Paul, thank you for pointing me in the right direction. I overlooked the line in the book to note the position of the eccentrics. As you guessed, I had way overtightened the carriage so it couldn’t fully move down into “print” mode, and thus i couldn’t get the trip rack to move fully up and down either. I reset all the eccentrics to their original state and then did some small adjustments from there, and then was able to get the rack back on. I am pleased to say it’s printing very well now.
It’s possible that your bearing adjustment is stopping the carriage. Compare the eccentric orientation on your press to the drawing on Sheet 106 of the operator’s manual. Note the greater offset distance (apoapsis) from the center of the eccentric bolt to the bearing circumference.
Regarding the impression cylinder.