Garter Carriages and repairs

As some of you might know, I have a bunch of garter carriages. I also have a bunch of knitting machines. They all are getting older and needing maintenance. (We'll not mention Rita herself, who is also getting older and needing maintenance !)

I frequently watch the youtube videos that Ask Jack posts about cleaning and maintaining knitting machines. I have watched the videos he has done about the garter carriages too. I even used the information on them to tackle cleaning up a gc or two in the past.

This afternoon I tackled a gc which was not counting down correctly and which also would stop at unpredictable times when it was no-where near being done. I have done so well on this gc that I am posting an open letter to Jack and Katherine for their help. If you need help, just email them and ask. Jack also does repairs at their shop, but he is kept very busy. Check their website  theanswerlady.com

Here is my letter to them:

Thank you both for making those maintenance videos on the gc. I have a bunch of gc's which are slowly becoming troublesome. In the past I have watched Jack's videos and truly enjoyed them. I love the content and the humor that Kathryn adds, besides which she adds the non-mechanical woman's viewpoint. I definitely have a non-mechanical  woman's viewpoint. 

My most recent problems have to do with the counters. They tend to not count down. Sometimes the middle number will not flip when the far right one goes from 0 to 9. That is what Kathryn might have noticed me posting on a Facebook list about fixing it when I was "playing" with my gc.  

Today I opened a different gc that would not count down correctly and would frequently stop even when it had a number of rows to knit. I tried my best to get the gunk and fuzz out, and lubed it with the food grade stuff. I even managed to wrestle the circlip off and on by myself for the first time! Twice! Well, I had thought I was finished and put everything back together, then discovered that one of the levers on the top would not move and was not connected to anything, so I had to undo all those screws and the circlip and put the lever in the proper place. Now I am testing the gc. It seems to be running okay now, but I still need to put the sensors in the back and see if it will follow the km directions for patterning. It SOUNDS okay  

It was good to hear Jack mention on one of the videos that sometimes the gc will do all that stopping when it needs to be cleaned and lubed and that the stopping does not necessarily mean the motor is shot! 

It sounds like I have one finished and only 3 or 4 (or more) to do now

What a sense of accomplishment. It would have been easier to do years ago when my thumbs worked and my eyesight was better!  

Thank you both for all that you do.