Monday, September 1, 2014

Tighten Your Belt

Bernina 730 with shredded belt

More debris!
In a previous post I wrote about a wonderful gift of a Bernina Record 730 that came to me with a few issues. The major problem turned out to be a shredded upper belt as you can see from this first photo. Wow, what a mess! It took awhile before I could get another upper belt and I even thought I'd order a lower belt while I was at it but something went wrong in my communication and I only ended up with the upper belt. No big deal since the lower belt is still serviceable. This weekend was the time to take apart the belt system and get that new one working.

How to get this all taken out had me a bit perplexed until I shone a bright light on the lower pulley: a c-clamp was holding it in. This one came out easily, both wheels with belt were coaxed off, so now we could get a good look at the mess. What a mess it was with the black shreds all over but thankfully due to the all metal nature of this sewing machine it was contained to only one end. Many cotton balls, flannel, Q-tips, and plane old elbow grease got all of it cleaned out; here she is for inspection:

Shredded belt debris gone!
The new belt fit nicely, old belt lined up, and some gentle pushing got everything back together:

New belt is pinkish, old lower belt is black.
After reassembly I got to try her out and found out after a few adjustments and a lesson from the manual to relearn what all the dials were for, she stitched just as nice as I would expect from a Bernina.

Bernina Record 730 with sample stitch patterns
This sewing machine might find a home permanently with me, especially because her light switch doesn't work. That wouldn't bother me but it's not a great selling point. Later in the day I sewed up a couple seams on the first Bernina Record 730 and I had to admit it had a nicer feel and sound so it looks like I might have to put them side by side and see how I can improve this one. The potential is there, kind of like a parent who says "I know my child is bright but..."

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Karen - I also hsve a Bernina Record730. Upper belt schredded and lower belt brittle so have ordered new of each. You say a c-clam holds in the lower pulley. Where exactly is that clamp and how did you remove it? I Found a break out diagram of the assemblyon this french website:
https://machine-a-coudre-petit.fr/courroies/537-courroie-moteur-bernina-730-record-.html
Is the c-clamp you mention shown there?

I realize that you wrote your post back in November 2014 but hope you'll respond.

Karen said...

It has been awhile since I wrote this post but I'm glad to hear you are tackling this job as it wasn't too difficult in the end. For the lower belt, the c-clamp is on the larger wheel right in the middle of the photo. You can pry it off with a small screw driver. If yours doesn't have it (there are various versions of this model) then it might be held on in some other way.

Unknown said...

Hi Karen,

My wife has a "730" and I have been servicing it recently. I have had difficulty in acquiring

the little 2 pin plug attached to the foot pedal lead.Do you have any ideas where I could

obtain one? (I am living in France.)