Elna Supermatic Beige/Brown

I dragged out this machine from the far reaches of a basement corner and dusted it off a couple days ago. Don't know why, I guess it just looked dejected. When I bought it, the front needle plate and two itty bitty bobbin holder screws were missing. I also have an Elna Transforma that is the straight-stitch version of these Supermatics, so I thought it might be better to get the nicer Supermatic going by cannibalizing the parts I needed from the Transforma.

As can be seen in the above photo, the machine is together, and I can say it runs great. I'd pulled the needle plate from the Transforma, but as for the two itty bitty bobbin case screws, I happened to find them down in the depths of the Supermatic when I tipped it upside down to shake out some fur balls. That was a major score, since the screws also have tiny springs on them and it would have been a major issue finding replacement screws and springs.

Here's what it looked like when I got it. How could someone put a PLASTIC foot on this once-great machine?

I did also find that the feed dogs were the wrong size for this machine (maybe that's why the needle plate was missing), so I also had to pull the set from the Transforma. I can modify the wrong one to make it work but am going to try and figure out which Elna it fits first, and maybe sell it and buy the correct one.

I happened to glance at the foot controller and it had a broken piece of porcelain inside, so I popped it apart and found the carbon pile holding tube was broken apart. It was amazing the thing still worked. I super-glued it back together. The crack can be seen in the below photos. The small cylindrical stacks are some of the carbon disks. There were a bunch!

Here it is with the carbon disks in place...

... and the foot controller all back together. I didn't tighten the upper left screw in the porcelain piece very much because I didn't want to stress the super glue too much.

The foot controller is made in Wisconsin, so I don't know if it is original or not. It sure looks it.

This Supermatic has the push-button cam release, whereas my older green Supermatic has a phenolic threaded knob to hold the cams in place. I tried using the zig zag cam from the green machine but this push button mechanism didn't hold it in place. I now notice the cam seen below that's in the newer Supermatic has a 'shorter' inner bore that allows some small fingers to catch the top of the cam and hold it in place. So for now I only have the one cam that fits this machine.

I also found that the stitch length lever needs to be slid all the way down to the "A" position to get the full effect of the double-stack cams, which allows the cam to control the feed dog forward/reverse motion and not just the side to side zig zag motion.

Below is a sample of what the #148 cam stitch does. I need to find a zig zag cam....

An interesting thing I noticed is that the handwheel has green paint that can be seen where the brownish/beige paint is chipped off. I wonder if Elna had a bunch of green handwheels they just painted over when they switched to the newer color, or if the green is just a primer. Something that makes you go, "Hmm".