How do you deep-clean a Selectric?
Posted: 17 Oct 2017, 00:13
I recently came into possession of an almost-working but extremely dirty Correcting Selectric II that I am willing to put a ton of work into.
Does anyone with experience with this sort of thing know where to start? Is there some sort of cleaning solvent that I can use indoors and not get wiped out by fumes?
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Maybe useless extra details:
The grease and dust everywhere inside the machine seems to have coagulated into a putty. In a kind-of-stupid-in-retrospect first step I decided to spray the mechanism with WD40. It's messier now but seems to be a bit closer to working since some of the grease has come out.
I cleaned the rail the golf-ball carriage is mounted on so that the carriage can slide back and forth smoothly, but the board still locks and makes a humming noise after the first keypress. The main belt keeps spinning, but the clutch on the shaft the belt drives stops.At this point if I force the main drive shaft forward, as I push it, the typewriter laboriously rotates/slaps the golf ball, then the main shaft starts spinning on its own again. I am guessing there is just too much gunk somewhere in the mechanism to work on its own.
Does anyone with experience with this sort of thing know where to start? Is there some sort of cleaning solvent that I can use indoors and not get wiped out by fumes?
---
Maybe useless extra details:
The grease and dust everywhere inside the machine seems to have coagulated into a putty. In a kind-of-stupid-in-retrospect first step I decided to spray the mechanism with WD40. It's messier now but seems to be a bit closer to working since some of the grease has come out.
I cleaned the rail the golf-ball carriage is mounted on so that the carriage can slide back and forth smoothly, but the board still locks and makes a humming noise after the first keypress. The main belt keeps spinning, but the clutch on the shaft the belt drives stops.At this point if I force the main drive shaft forward, as I push it, the typewriter laboriously rotates/slaps the golf ball, then the main shaft starts spinning on its own again. I am guessing there is just too much gunk somewhere in the mechanism to work on its own.