I thought I’d give my Universal III a good cleaning after it had sat idle for a good deal of the winter while doing some home remodeling. I started out cleaning out the gear racks and noticed that the carriage latch was pretty loose and no spring tension. I pulled it off and found the spring had been sheared into many separate pieces. Fortunately Fritz has a replacement coming my way, but I thought I’d post a photo as I had not seen anything like this before.
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I’ve had problems with some of the replacement springs. Even though same length and O.D. as original spring, some have been made of a thicker wire, and as a result cannot be compressed as far as needed and the cylinder will bind at the cam. If that is the case you can cut off coil after coil from the spring until there is enough clearance.
It seems that the hole in the latch lever is a good deal wider than necessary to house the spring top. I suppose that causes the spring to flex instead of just compress, and a coil of the spring can get caught on the side of it and get sheared. it would seem a housed spring (with a cap over the spring which rides into the bottom cavity) would have been a better choice here, and would not require the lever to be drilled at all.
Of course I’m not a Vandercook engineer, and there must have been some rationale for the big hole.
John H.
Thanks John. Yep, that’s how I find them all the time.
X-11022 is the spring for the Universal and SP series, the 219 and Challenge M series.
QRS-6 is the spring for the Nos. 3, 4, 215 and the 15-21.