Saturday, July 12, 2014

Facit TP2 Final Adjustment and Substitute Feet

The first few lines show the stacking. The last 7 the repair.




This mechanism locks the keys at the end of a line.

The odd shaped screw was originally parallel with the silver lever.

Replacement vinyl foot example. 

The feet extend just enough to grip really good.

The small semi-circular spring assists the auto-reverse.

The spring is missing from the right spindle.

Anyone have a parts machine with a card guide on it that matches this one?  It is bent and I'd like to find a replacement.  It works, but I am afraid much more bending will break it.  It is rather fragile. I could use a tiny spring for the right spindle auto-reverse too.
Overall the TP1 and TP2 are rather easy to work on as all parts are easily accessible. 

Housing is easily removed as well as the carriage and carriage cover, platen, and feed roller.

The carriage comes off easily by removing the small spring that protrudes through the hole in the bottom cover and 4 mounting screws, 2 at each end of the rails.

Escapement is easyly removed with 4 screws. The main spring is held by 2 screws.

Text alignment can be a bit tricky as the adjuster locking nuts can be tricky to tighten. 

Margin alignmnet and tab alignment as well as carriage feed adjustments are rather easy.  Sets are easy to work on , difficult to accurately set.

Even the spindles are somewhat easy to remove.  The tiny spring is very brittle, but with care they do not need to be disturbed.  There is a good reason the spindles are not a big problem to completely take apart -- the cement that Facit used as grease.
I have a TP1 and TP2 and I completly redid all 4 spindles because the poor quality grease turned to cement.

Overall nice typewriters to work on, but typical of the quality of many machines of the 60s and better than most of the 70s.

I find the TP1 and TP2 quite nice typers with the backspace and margin release intuitively located with the right hand shift key.

Worst thing about these machines is the completly stupid margin sets.  I think the engineer that designed them and the manager that approved them and put them into production were both drunk as a skunk or complete idiots.  I'll take a Hermes 3000 system over these pieces of crap any day.  Facit ruined very good machines with completely idiotic margin sets.


14 comments:

  1. Ahh…your Facit is a twin to mine, same color, typeface, and year!

    Those springs on the ribbon advance are missing rather often, it seems.

    The Facit 1620 fixes the horrible margins, by the way (All they needed to add was a little indicator for where the position was…why it took them so long who knows), and after having used 6 different Facits (2 of each TP1, TP2, and 1620) I think it's fair to say that 1620 is as good to type with as the TP2, and therefore I recommend it slightly more, even though I prefer the TP2's styling. The only difference is the colors and the ribbon cover.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Generally the way I set them is move the carriage to where I want the margin, set the stop and then move the carriange one space at a time tweaking the location of the stop (which sometimes do not go one space only, yet the bar they ride on is fine. I think it has to do with not having an accurate coordination of paper guide and the bail scale since (unlike a Royal HH and a few others) it does not have a front carriage location scale. The margins generally end-up about 2-1/2 to 3 inches from the ends for 1-1/4 margins -- senseless. Even though my old Underwood is backwards to most typewritert the scales are accurate and once one realizes; oh, they set opposite sides. They are easy and make sense.

      Delete
    2. I've been wanting to get a 1620. Maybe after we get back to VA.

      Delete
  2. Oh you have no idea how many times I think to myself 'what were they thinking when they designed this.. or that' :) Can't help you with your missing part Bill, hopefully one of your readers will! Your photos of the machinations of this typewriter are excellent. Hope the preparations for the move back to VA are going well.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
    2. Like the wipers that wipe towards the driver side only and wipe all the passenger side crud in front of where the driver needs to see. 99% of car makers do that because it it cheap for them and cheap quality (that costs a bundle) for the buyer.

      Delete
  3. Hmm! I hadn't noticed that Bill, must check when I get in the car tomorrow :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. I hadn't realised the carriage came off so easily, it would have helped when I was de-crumbing mine a year or so back. You see (saw) a lot of springs like that - or at least performing a similarly flat, low tension function in old cassette recorders. They used to stop the free hub from over-spinning when you hit FF or RR. Maybe worth a look if you can modify something like that to fit the ribbon drive? Facits seem less common here in the UK than older Haldas so the likelihood of a parts machine turning up is slim - but I hope you have some luck.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The carrige is easily removed. 2 screws on each end of the carriage track get removed and off it comes. I have several photos I need to post.

      I thought of cassette springs, but I no longer have any old cassette machines.

      Delete
  5. Bill - thanks for the instruction and pics. Lots of education here in the typosphere. Also - nice machine and typeface. I have a facit 1620 with script typeface.
    Sounds like you are looking forward to moving to VA over FL?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'll take living in VA or MT over FL any day.

      Delete
  6. Hi Bill.. just thought you might like to check out fellow blogger Jack from Hartford, he has just done a super series of portrait shots of the new residents of the old Underwood Typewriter Company building in Hartford, such a wonderful collection of old typewriters housed there, have you been there? Here's Jack's link
    http://hartforddailyphoto.blogspot.com.au/

    ReplyDelete
  7. Does anybody knows how to fix the paper moving part?! I bought a facit privat tp2 and neither space bar nor key movements work

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. May be a bit too much to write in a comment since there could be several reasons. First off if nothing moves -- Is the carriage lock released? If so, does the carriage move when the carriage release is pressed? If it moves on its own the main spring is ok, if it releases and you need to move it the mainspring or drawband may be defective. Create and join the Yahoo! group TYPEWRITERS. It is the largest and longest running forum on line.
      Another good forum is Typewriter Talk

      Delete