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I cleaned the thing out completely. I used a load of lint-free rags to clean the grunge off of everything on the gear side.

I reversed a total of 2 sprockets, and found 2 new-looking ones on the parts machine. One was for the intermittent. Thanks for the tip on the adjustment of the sprocket here.

The oil in the intermittent was nasty looking. I had to poke a small piece of wire into the drain hole to get it started. The owner of the theatre got a gallon of LaVezzi oil from someone that he knows. I refilled the intermittent, regreased all the gears, and oiled everything else. There was a marked difference in the amount of general noise.

You guys would not believe how dirty the slit lens / exciter lamp was...

I dont think that this machine has had any general cleaning in a very long time. I cleaned film deposits off the gate/trap using alcohol and a plastic pen cap as a scraper tool. When I removed the sprockets to reverse them, there was plenty of crap behind them wrapped around the shafts.

Some of the guide rollers were stuck. but not now.

I let the machine sit there and run for about an hour, dumped the oil from the intermittent again, and re-filled it. There were some particles floating in the oil that drained, but it was not magnetic. Could this just be old oil varnish? I really think that it is not as loud as before. The knocking has diminished.

While it sat there running, I worked on the lamphouse. I removed the lamp, using a lamp guard, and cleaned the insides of the unit. The fans were filthy and caked with gook. They are all clean and the motors are oiled. The mirror needs to be replaced, but I doubt that it will be done anytime soon. It looks like a lamp exploded sometime, but there was no quartz bits in the bottom of the unit. I also blew off the boards, and transformers, tightened all connections especially 2 on a rather large capacitor. These two looked overheated, so I used some emery cloth on them. Now, everything is bright, clean, and shiny in there.

The owner was nervous when I was handling the lamp. It is just a few weeks old, ahd he does not have a spare right now. He was sure that it was going to get broken. It is a Hanovia, but I didn't notice the wattage.

While the projector was running, I brush-cleaned the amps, and made sure that everything was hooked up good.

The exciter power supply was plugged into a small fused power strip inside the sound rack. The fuse on the strip was loose in its holder, and was causing a "zzzt" sound in the theatre now and then. It's fixed, too.

The platter rollers were no big problem either. All I did to it was generally wipe everything off. My rags were filthy.

You should have seen what I got off of the lenses!!!

I ran one of my junk reels of trailers to try it out. The owner was in the theatre and said that the image was much sharper across the screen, brighter-looking, sounded better, and no longer had that "bounce" in the image that he hated so...

I will be going back regularly to service this unit. They liked my price.

I have now serviced a Century SA, probably not as thoroughly as some of you guys, but I know that every oil hole got a few drops, and it's clean and sounds better. AND it didn't scratch my junk reel.

And I'll be going back this month and give it the onceover again!!

If it had not been for Film-Tech, and all the great suggestions, I'd never have tried to do this. As most of you know, my other 35 experience is with a Holmes!

When I worked in the drive-in, I was only a back-up projectionist! I'm not a tech, but I am helping keep this theatre running! Thanks!