This a continuation of my Mr. Machine saga, following from my last post (/members-area/personalblogs/b/gene-breniman-s-blog/posts/and-then-there-were-three-unwarping-the-wheels-and-soon-there-maybe-four ).
A reproduction Mr. Machine has been purchased from eBay and arrived to my porch. The unit is part of a reproduction lot, built using the original molds (from Ideal toy company). This unit was returned to the eBay seller, due to a broken main spring. While the spring is broken, it still winds, up to a point and it can run Mr. Machine for a short distance.
Today, I fully disassembled Mr. Machine to check into the main spring. I remember fixing one of the original Mr. Machine main springs back in the early 60's, but holding it in my hands, I could not fathom how I might have accomplished that. The main spring is held in a metal housing which is riveted to one half of the Mr. Machine body. There is a small hole through which the windup gear's square hub can pass to engage the bent, square portion of the spring. I do vaguely remember pulling the spring through this hole, while unwinding the spring, somehow reattaching the spring end to the metal housing and then rewinding the spring into the metal housing. For today, I will skip the attempt to fix the main spring and instead use this as an opportunity to 'help' my Grandson, Caleb, to assemble the Mr. Machine from the instructions. Caleb is only 6 and just beginning to read, so I will read the instructions step-by-step and use the illustrations to help guide him through the assembly. So, here we go.
Here are all the pieces, disassembled and laid out on the table. (note: while it is possible to disassemble Mr. Machine's head, ten pieces total, I chose not to do that at this time)
The parts are all nice, clean and shiny. While there are some differences in color and other changes, for the most part the pieces are a very good match to the original Mr. Machine pieces. There is a small sticker on one the two halves of the body that shows the alternate date of manufacture (10/5/2015).
Caleb was very excited to get started, so we jumped right in. Here is a picture of an early step in the assembly process.
At this point we have most of the drive gears loaded into Mr. Machine right half of the body. Caleb really enjoyed working through the gears, after each step he would spin the gears to see how they interacted and to hear them spin. I also noticed that as I read each step in the instruction he was keeping track of the last part number and calling out the next part number before I could complete the instructions.
We continue through the instructions and I became so engrossed in helping Caleb and seeing in his reactions that might matched my reactions as a child, that I stopped taking pictures of the process. We made through the instruction pretty well, but there were a few places where we needed to backtrack to fix an issue or error, but in the end we were successful. Here is a picture of the completion celebration.
Caleb has a dramatic side and is showing a little extra attitude here. With the main spring issue, we could not get a very long run, but it was still well appreciated.
Thanks again for following along with this story/blogs. I hope to report of the main spring repair next.
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