I either had to start a new thread, or find a relevant existing one to hijack....this won
I had though that this screw was for centering the needle and maybe had a soapbox session about it a while ago, but what Gerry says is exactly what I discovered.....
It all started yesterday arvo when I made a snap decision to change to -ve earth, just enough daylight to do it (oh yeah), that was until I dropped one of the terminal grub screws, which hit the mudguard and...?
? so after a half hour -getting dark- phone torch would've been good if I'd looked in the right place, no find, so started this morning carefully snipping the grass with scissors (planning the job is a great idea), but gave up and got out the vacuum.....yep might've looked a bit weird vacuuming the lawn- but found it...you guessed it, last place I looked...!!!
Then I realised the terminal block is a bit loose in the body, so figured to fix it...no go/ no need, but also noticed the coil close to the body, so fixed that with a nudge, figuring it could be a future short circuit (see photo)... then tried to 'centre the needle'...until I discovered that what Gerry said
that screw adjusts the vertical play for the needle spindle, too tight and the needle won't move, too loose and the spindle falls out of the dimple!!
, is how it is,and it's a bitch t get back in place...
So now I have -ve earth, and a newly adjusted needle pivot and the only way I could find to adjust the needle centre is to 'manipulate' the shape of the needle...which gets out of shape anyway, when taking the face off...thing I noticed, is after I had the needle nicely centred, when I put it in the hole it went out of whack, took a while to figure that something magnetic was affecting it..
Hopefully tomorrow road test will show all good (I'd go tonight, but don't need to and best play it safe)