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 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.

David, thank you so much for showing us your step by step process on resurrecting a timer motor! I enjoyed it immensely. I'm looking forward to seeing more!

Louie

I wondered about all those breaks myself. It's a real head scratcher. All I can say for certain is that it didn't break while I was unrolling it. The broken ends would just slip off the spool without even the slightest hint of a tug. While trying to find a way around the dead timer motor problem, I managed to find a local outfit that had a timer assembly that used the very same motor. They wanted eighty dollars for it, but before I would even consider it I asked them to put a meter on the motor leads and see if it was good. It wasn't. Somehow, while just sitting in its box on the parts shelf for the last few decades it developed an open. So I guess this is more common than I would have thought.

As far as the escapement goes, that little spring you mentioned definitely unwound when I opened it up. Fortunately, it made enough noise when it let loose that I knew something important had just happened, so I went looking for the cause. It wasn't too hard to find, or correct for that matter. The escapement is reassembled at this point, and even though the motor wasn't working, I was able to drive the input gears with a very small flat tip screw driver and confirm that everything is working as it should. They really are clever little devices, and they're kind of fun to watch.

The scale used here is intended for reloading ammunition, so it's calibrated in grains. But any sensitive and accurate scale would work fine. In this case, the weight of the old wire and the empty spool was 576.6 grains, and the weight of the spool loaded with new wire was 576.7 grains. Close enough.

As for the wire, believe it or not, my dad had that big spool of wire sitting on a shelf in his bedroom.(that's just how he is) He retired from the Department of Water and Power here in Los Angeles, and the DWP does almost all of their own maintenance, including rewinding electrical solenoids and motor windings. They have machines that turn the spools that the wire is being fed onto, and since they can't have the wire run out before the spool is fully loaded, once the spools that are supplying the new wire get below a certain point, they're  set aside for scrap or small projects. My dad bought one and brought it home years ago. I just got lucky in that it turned out to be the exact same wire that I needed for this little job. The label on the end of the spool identifies it as number 39 wire, which should be .0035 inches in diameter, but the wire actually measured out to .0041 inches. I'm going to guess that the difference is the thickness of the varnish applied to the wire.

The nut drivers belonged to my grandfather who was a TV and radio repairman in the fifties and sixties. They came in a small set and were made by Xcelite. They've been very handy over the years. Do you by any chance have the same set?

WOW David that was a very impressive repair. It is interesting to me that we are seeing so many of that style timer motor failing these days. Back 30+ years ago we almost never saw these early black motors fail, it must be that their was some deterioration of the motor wire insulation that time is taking its toll on. The thing that I have been doing when I see these black timer motors fail is to mount the next generation silver motor on the escapement, these newer motors were a proper replacement and were used all through the 1960s and into the 70s and are still around.

On today's machines with the better quality control and better manufacturing processes I suspect that things like this will not fail after 60 years nearly so often, BUT the electronics will be the parts that fail in today's machines over time and they may or may not be so possible to fix, Time Will Tell, John.

The odd looking flat pieces of metal that tied the fine coil wire to the large power leads were going to be too difficult and risky to use again. They originally sat in slots in the black plastic block with a short piece of wire lead crammed into the hole below them, then they were sealed in place by melting the black plastic and spreading it over the top of the slot. You can see the way they were installed in reply 10 if you’re curious. That sort of thing seldom works more than once, and I was really worried about breaking the little wire leads. So I did this instead. It’s not pretty but it works, and with any luck, nobody will ever have a reason to be in there again. “Fingers crossed”

Finally reunited with the escapement, it sat here on the counter with power applied for about half an hour while I watched it work. After Jon's comment above regarding the spring loaded gear in the escapement I wanted to be sure I had it right. Thankfully, everything seemed to be fine, so I decided it was time to finish putting it back together.

And now, after all that, it’s ready for Kevin to pick up at last. It’s only been what, two and a half months? I sure hope Kevin wasn't in a hurry.

I have to admit though, when I first offered to fix the Apex's timer I had no idea it would lead to rewinding a motor. But when it turned out that the motor was bad I figured I'd at least look into it. After all, it was already dead, so it certainly couldn't hurt to look. Things just sort of took off from there, and as it turns out, the motor was only "mostly dead."

One of the main reasons I wanted to try this is that original parts, and even suitable replacements, are steadily disappearing from parts shelves all over the country. Some are being purchased and used, but quite a few are simply being thrown away under the mistaken assumption that nobody wants them anymore. I've encountered this several times myself. I'll walk in to an appliance shop that's been around for decades and tell them what I'm looking for, only to hear the guy tell me that I should have stopped by a couple of years ago. They had boxes and boxes of that stuff that they threw away. This is going to lead to a serious parts shortage one of these days, and for some machines it already has. Consequently, in order to keep our vintage machines going we're going to have to find ways to work around this problem. Some are already heading in that direction with discussions about having certain parts made, and for some parts that really is the only solution. But for quite a few parts, if we can find ways to repair them and keep them going a bit longer then we've scored a minor victory of sorts. As you can see, none of the tools I used in this repair are high tech or all that hard to come by, and yet they worked out. So anyone else that wanted to do this shouldn't have too much trouble assembling everything they'd need. Some of you may already have ideas about ways to improve the process.

Jon - The staking had originally been applied with a center punch, creating a small dimple in the motor housing that extended over the top plate(the one with the gears mounted to it) in four places. I had to use very strong pointed needle nose pliers to bend these out of the way. They could have been reinstalled with a punch, but instead I used a very small hammer to bend the housing above the top plate inward slightly at each of the previous stake points. It seemed to work. I hope this helps. Are you thinking of having a go at this with one of your timer motors?

YAY David!   The only thing I can do is echo what others have said, very impressive and awesome job!!   

I would be afraid to tackle something like this, mostly because I've never done anything like it.

I can't thank you enough, but I'll try. 

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!

Kevin

You're welcome, you're welcome, you're welcome!

Jon - if you're going to tackle this then let me pass on a little more info that might be useful. The plastic spool is kept centered in the motor housing by twelve metal posts. Six are mounted to the floor of the housing, while six are mounted to the top plate. All are mounted in pairs spaced 120 degrees apart, and each one has a small metal peg protruding from the exposed end that fits into a corresponding hole on the opposite plate. I'm pretty sure that when these were made the metal plates with all the posts would have been assembled on the plastic spool prior to being installed in the motor housing. Then the lower plate was riveted in place through the bottom of the housing. Now because of those rivets, the lower plate will stay behind fixed to the floor of the housing and only the upper plate with its six posts will come out. Be very careful that you keep that upper plate level as you withdraw it from the center of the plastic spool. The fit is quite snug, and if one of those posts should become bent then reassembly will be difficult. They're too thick to bend in the middle, but you'll want to watch out for the spot were they mount to the upper plate. If one or more of them should get off kilter then its little peg won't line up with its hole. Though I suppose that if that were to happen you might be able to remove the rivets that hold the lower posts in place and go from there, but I'm getting ahead of myself now. I should have taken a picture or two of all that but somehow I completely overlooked it. At least now you know, so you'll be prepared for it. Best of luck to you.

PS. If you look at reply 39 you can see the ends of two of the posts I'm talking about. They're staked into place in the top plate with a rather crude x pattern. 

Jon - Those two stakes you see are indeed the ends of two of the metal posts. Each of them has a companion sitting just out of sight, and then two more are completely hidden from view under the gear assembly. I didn't tamper with them at all. The stakes I had to remove were in the housing itself and held the top plate in place by gripping its edge in four places. Once you get into your project you'll quickly see what I'm talking about.

David - A modified coat rack would be funny enough, but that device isn't a coat rack. It's actually a "bottle tree," meant to display colored glass bottles outside were the sunlight can shine through them. You simply slip the bottles over the wires and they sit there upside down. My sister gave it to my dad for Christmas this past year because he has lots of colored glass bottles he won't get rid of. When pressed on the issue he simply replies "but they're neat," and then holds one up to the light to admire the colored glass. Again, you'd have to know my dad.

As for the use of the scale to determine how much wire to use, Phil is right. Counting turns wasn't practical with all the breaks in the wire, but if you wanted to go that route, there are devices you can purchase that are made for winding coils and they come with a built in counter. If I was planning to do a lot of these I'd probably buy one. A search on Google using the term "coil winder" will lead you to them.

Robert - I think the little motors would be pretty tolerant of minor variations in the number of turns, but I don't have a clue what 25% more wire than needed would do. I'll just defer to Phil's answer above.

Considering how many turns of wire there are in these coils, into the thousands actually, weighing them is probably a better option than counting turns. I think you'd be surprised at how accurate weighing can be with the right scale. When rewinding coils like these that use such fine wire, the guys at the DWP here in LA always go by weight. They say it just isn't worth the hassle of counting.

it should always be "local"

Wow guys, thanks for tuning into this thread again after so much time has passed. It's nice to see that it hasn't been forgotten. I've also wondered if anyone else had decided to give this a try, so if anyone did, please chime in and let us know how it went.

Paul, I've actually been wondering if this repair would be repeatable. As I mentioned higher up in the thread, that plate with the six metal posts attached to it could have been really difficult to reassemble, but it wasn't, so now I worry that I just got lucky. Consequently, I think I'd like a chance to try this again. If I remember correctly I believe I even asked Robert if he had any dead ones laying about that I could work on, but as fate would have it he didn't so I just let it go. Anyways, send me a message through the private message system and let me know what you have in mind.

Would you happen to have a photo of one of these timer motors so people will know what they're looking for?

a photo would be most helpful I think.

I think I know the ones he's talking about but they were made in a window between the black motors and the later silver motors with combined escapements. It was a short window,I don't think I have any around.