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.

The Ides of March and quite a bit going on.

I reached the end of the paper and still had things to write.  I decided to cheat and do the remainder on line.

Sorry for my typos once again.  As I typed I got more into my music. 

I added more vinyl to my collection over the past week or two.  It all started when I found some U.S. Army Band LPs that were unopened and they were from when my Uncle was the assistant conductor.  I played them this morning.

Then as my usual self changed to the Pipes which eventually took me to Circa Paleo and the Hot Violinist.  I normally play Bluegrass, but today I gravitated to a different genre.  The day will probably finish with listening to one of my old stations where I worked that still airs Bluegrass or I'll stream German Volksmusik.

I'd love to attend a concert with only The Hot Violinist and Mairead Nesbitt of Celtec Women & Charlie Daniels.  They are 3 of the best ever fiddlers I've ever heard.  I had a friend in the Opry who was really good, but I doubt his playing comes close to these three.

No time to get the Nikkormat or any of my cameras out yet even though the weather is great. (77F/25C, sunny & clear)  I have to get the taxes finished and do more work on our move.  Hopefully we will be able to find a house and move by summer. 

Here is a link to the Calumet post on My Vintage Cameras.

And this is the Facit spring:

Same spring on TP1 and the left is different from the right as they are wound 180 deg. from each other.  They break very very very easily when trying to remove them -- even with small tweezers.

Linux applications are getting too much Windoze-like for me.  I loaded the latest GIMP and like windoze stuff like PhotoShop it now requires hours and hours of relearning the crappy changes only for the sake of change so I tired of looking for highlighting tools and post only the photo of the spring without highlighting and text.  Funny how I thought of a post on Change, but I chose not to go into a tirade because that is what it would be.  I like change when it is for good, to make something easier, faster, better, but 99% of what is happening with software in the past few years sucks, and that is as polite as I can be.  If I did not write code and if I did not learn from the start to write concise easy to follow code that is not a memory hog and have an intuitive interface to the real world I may feel differently.  I do those as far back as 10 years ago many of the engineers and programmers coming out of college I had as interns never had an inkling of what I just stated.  It has gotten worse.

Well, this is also the last day of Bike Week.  Next week will be much less traffic and no traffic jams and frequent accidents.  Too many people who drive cars do not watch for motorcycles.

More on the Facit TP2

Thought I'd leave the alignment testing on the first part.  Looks like the upper case must be lowered a bit, but first I must make a wrench.  A 5.5mm ignition wrench is just a bit too big. I need to grind the outside down a bit or find one that is offset and grind a part of it.  I left it alone rather than have the screws move while typing if I did loosen the lock nuts or worse yet, strip the corners off of the nuts.

This is the Facit TP2 cleaned and I thought ready to use, but the left margin shifts because the platen can move latterally just enough to cause mis-alignment.  I think I can fit some thrust or wiggle washers on the right end.  Poorly designed.

One thing I of which I am certain, the typewriter companies did not make as many spelling and typing mistakes as I make.

Maybe when I am finished with the repairs it will type as good as it looks.  Then it really does type nice.  It is the mechanical deficiencies that bug me.

Readers of this blog may recall this one when it was covered in mildew or when it almost ended up on the scrap heap.  The SM4 and Socialite are the fastest Olypias I have.  Both have a great touch and action.  The SM9 comes close, but not quite.

It's Another Facit Pica Cubic! Facit TP2

Its been a long and tiring day.  Post is complete with typos, mis spelled words and un-GIMPed photos.