Oil wick replacement

[mikesc]

From the evidence in the bottles, it would appear that both your camels are pregnant ( the one on the right may be expecting twins ), and two of your crocodiles may be dead or injured, or at least severely pining for the billabongs. Onya

[dikman]

Rocky,    (although I must admit I'm partial to a nice single malt - no juice, of course).

[TinkerTailor]

I much prefer a smokey single malt as well. I was talking about NEW hobbies.....Old whiskey Is an old hobby.

[HENDREFORGAN]

To return to the original subject . . hic!  . . sorry but yesterday evening I was "appreciating" my large collection of awesome English ales . . . has anybody with one of these machines both taken a look inside to see if they are infested with fluffy brightly coloured worms and, more importantly, what does their owners/service manuals say?

Take note that our research above shows that rather a few of the "205-370" manufacturing variants show clear evidence of this "system" being used?  Global, Cowboy, Sieck . . can anyopne add any more?

Given the universal reaction on here from sewing machine users it's fairly evident that this was a change nobody was aware of . . though we will assume the manufacturer had their reasons they rather sneaked it by most. 

[Nandy]

Uwe, im planing to replace all the wicks and felts off my lu1508, what did you end up using and did it worked right?

 

Thansk!!!!

[Uwe]

I used thin strips of wool felt to replace my missing oil wicks and it worked fine from what I could tell. I've not replaced any wicks inside of plastic tubes, so I can't make any recommendations on that.  

[Nandy]

Thanks!

[HENDREFORGAN]

From what we've now seen inside our 205-370 the oil wicks seem to break down into two groupings, pipe cleaner style wicks inside small diameter pvc tubing and "fluffy purple caterpillars" wrapped around the final destination of moving parts.  Providing your always using the correct grade of oil delivered through the plastic grommets then the former seems maintenance free . . it's them damn "fluffy purple caterpillars" that are the problem and, being where you want the lubrication to do it's job, not something that is wise to ignore.

The manufacturers would have chosen this material "on spec" but what they failed to take into account is it's fragile nature.  We're not sure we've cleaned all of the bits of "fluffy purple caterpillars" that the machine has chewed up and distributed as a fog of purple fibres exactly where you DON'T want the damn stuff.   We would think a good quality felted wool would be no issue, flexible and able to soak up lot's of oil, it's cost would be so cheap you could replace the whole lot for so little money . . and yet it's value to keeping your machine well lubricated is priceless.

We're still looking for a vintage long spouted oil can small enough to poke into our machine/s guts . . . I'll take the trade off with making the "fluffy purple caterpillars" redundant by using "Number One Eyeball" to actually see the oil is getting to the right place.   We will though ensure the wicks in the tubing are moved to where that system will still deliver oil to somewhere useful.

[RockyAussie]

If it helps I bought a few of the needle dispensing bottles for just this task from HK similar to as in this link.http://www.ebay.com/itm/Two-1-OZ-bottles-with-stainless-needle-tip-dispenser-for-Grandfather-Clock-Oil-/120925943269

[ZigZag]

I recently restored an old leblond metal lathe that used felt wick in all sorts of places. Be careful what you buy though some products sold as felt are actually acrylic. It has to be pure wool or it will degrade quickly from the oil.