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Singer 99K with added ooooomph.

Contrary to what Diane, my partner thinks, I am not a sewing machine collector. I do have two vintage Singers, a 99K Centennial edition from 1951 and a 201K dating back to 1940. I also have a Toyota Super Jeans 34, Toyota 3304 overlocker and Singer 14SH754 overlocker. All of these machines are "in use", meaning that they are not display only machines. All of them except for the Singer overlocker have been used in the past week!
All have different strengths and weaknesses but I was beginning to feel that having two vintage machines, both hand cranked was more than a bit quirky. I definitely was trending towards putting an electric motor on one of them. The 99K would seem to be the ideal machine to remain hand cranked, being smaller and far more portable than the 201K, but as it originally had a Singer motor attached from new, I erred on the thought of replacing the crank on the 99K.
For a little over £30 inc p & p I was able to obtain a brand new YDK  90w. 0.45 amp motor complete with foot pedal from BSK in Bedford which seemed a hell of a good deal to me, and a lot less than it would cost to have the original motor and pedal repaired. OK, so it's a white motor on a black machine. Nope..... not bothered. The machine is going to be used, not displayed, so a 2 day wait and I had it.
The business end!

New motor, using the old Singer V belt.

Replacing the hand crank with the new motor took all of 5 minutes, with just one bolt to unscrew and a belt to attach. Although the motor came complete with a belt, I chose to refit the original black Singer belt, which seems to be almost new, keeping the new belt as a back-up/spare.
I did have to re-site my cheap-as-chips, 30 LED gooseneck lamp. It has a really powerful magnetic base so I now sit it on the metallic cover for the machine base accessory box which allows the lamp better access to the front of the machine.

Not just a pretty face(plate)

LED lamp now re-positioned on the accessory box cover.

As you can imagine the 99K can now fly along. The new motor has around 50% more power than the Singer original, but the machine is now more noisy especially when running at speed, as you might expect. The motor itself is remarkably quiet.
I gave the new motor a good testing yesterday putting together some quilt blocks for Diane. I have to say that for a 66 year old machine, with a new heart, the 99K is a very impressive little sewing machine and well worth the upgrade to a new motor. (But I am keeping the hand crank. You never know when it might come in handy)

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