Brunswick Ultona-crank doesnt

[stevec]

So, we got this lovely standup Reproducer from Gramma and its been here for a couple of years. Time to try and fix it. But I cant get the assembly out. It looks as if the crank should unscrew, but; How to stop the entire shaft from turning?? Any help welcomed.

[hillndalefan]

I suspect the reason you haven't had any response so far is that like me, few people have any idea what to do. The Brunswick cabinetry [at least on the ones I'm familiar with] has a sealed box around the motor. You can't go in next to the horn, or around the motor board. The winding shaft needs to be held still while you use penetrating oil on the threads of the crank, and then turn it counter-clockwise. Though it's drastic, about the only thing I could
suggest would be to cut off the crank just outside the case, remove the crank escutcheon, then carefully remove the motor board, pulling the rest of the crank through the hole, then acquiring a replacement crank. It's not impossible, but so drastic that I would hope someone else has a better solution to the problem. I certainly wouldn't rush to do this.

[adamsih300u]

Just noticed this topic, and while I see the OP is old, I'll chime in with my $.02, and though I claim to be no expert I'm putting the finishing touches on my Brunswick, and have had it apart a few times now for tweaks.

If the ratchet mechanism is working correctly in the motor assembly, you should just be able to turn counter-clockwise and unscrew the crank - even if it takes a little pressure to do so.

That said, if it's severely frozen - and if your Brunswick is anything like mine (mine is also an Ultona standup model) then there may be another option short of cutting the crank out.

Under the turntable platter, there's a large metal plate that has 8 screws in it. The outer four screws attach the plate to the cabinet, the inner four screws attach the motor assembly to the plate. If you undo the inner four screws as well as the outer four screws you should be able to remove the metal plate. The risk here, of course, is that the motor without support could fall on the horn (which on mine is protected from by a sheet metal plate, but it's really just to keep oil off the horn and provides little to no structural support). If you can provide leverage by holding the crank and also the spindle, you might keep the motor in place long enough to get the plate off, after which you should have pretty good access to the motor assembly itself and can support it. Then you could use some penetrating oil on that crank, and if need be force the ratchet into 'stop' mode.

There's some spacers and felt padding where the motor attaches to the metal plate, be sure to hunt them down if you try this since you'll need the spacers later and you can find replacement felt at any convenient 'everything' store, I just used solid felt pads and poked a properly sized hole in them. I have photos of how the plate attaches to the motor assembly if you wind up needing them.

Here's a picture of my plate and screw layout if that will help:


Hope that helps!

-Adam