Pilot E Repair

April 12, 2017

I have purchased a Pilot E pen with a bad sac. I found one thread from 2012 with no replies:

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/214224-pilot-e-300-disassembly/

in which the poster showed an image of the pen disassembled but did not elaborate on how that was done. I have gotten the bad sac from the steel sac protector and mostly from the nipple, but to put a new one on I clearly have to disassemble the section. The sac nipple is buried in the end of the section. The poster had a E-300 which looks to be slightly different than my pen as it had a brass screw in the section and mine is plastic. Any advise?

April 16, 2017

Update: Looked a little closer on the pen and it is a E-200 Pilot. I also found some discussions of disassembly of Pilot E-series pens of various types that seem related to the E-200 and E-300 but used cartridges. Based on those articles it appears I need to apply some heat and unthread the threaded part of the section. I tried using rubber bands for grip but could not get enough torque to budge anything. I have ordered a threaded shaft clamp in the correct size for the section thread, hopefully with that applied and some more heat I will be able to budge it and unscrew it. Most of the discussion on the other E-types was to remove the converter nipple, I do not think I will have to do that to get a new sack on the pen. Once things show up I will take pictures and describe the successful repair or document the destruction.

April 18, 2017

Made some progress on the Pilot E-200 fountain pen repair. First I heated the section in water to 145°F for a while and used the threaded shaft clamp and a pair of section pliers to get maximum unthreading power. Total failure could not get it to budge at all. Phase two stuck ink protection tube in section, to give me a place to hold the section and to reinforce the threads some, placed under hair dryer, and heated to as hot as I could stand to touch, no go. Went back to my desk and looked up Pilot E-200 some more, found some Japanese sites with information, the pictures looked different than the E-300 pictures I had found so I decided to take the protection tube out and have a closer look at the insides. The tube was reluctant to come out so I twisted and pulled some and a small plastic part came out with it. Apparently I had stuck the protection tube to the sac remnants on the nipple and pulled the whole thing out. In essence the plastic nib, sac and protection tube are acting like a converter.

May 1, 2017

Follow up on repair. Glued the new sac to the nib and slid everything into the body and inked it up. Did good for a few days then started to leak into the body. So I got it apart again. A little hard to get the nipple out but it finally came. I put a new sac on the nipple and let it dry overnight using shellac. Ended up with a no. 15 sac. I then placed shellac into the end of the section, keeping it off the end of the feed, shellacked the outside of the steel as well. Everything slid back in and let set overnight. So far it is working well. Replacing the sac next time is going to be a lot of work.

May 1, 2017

Wow... that's a lot of work for a Pilot E pen... but hopefully a learning experience. I think this one is called a "switch filler", because of the switch at the end of the tube... which simply acts like a lever to press a bar against the sac for compression.

It should be serviceable. It's certainly much better than the accordion sac that came with some Pilot pens, like the G-500. I have one were the sac ossified and there is no viable replacement that works the same way.

On yours, it might be worthwhile to locate a donor pen. Something with a bad body and/or cap, but intact filling mechanism.

May 6, 2017

Wow... that's a lot of work for a Pilot E pen... but hopefully a learning experience. I think this one is called a "switch filler", because of the switch at the end of the tube... which simply acts like a lever to press a bar against the sac for compression.

It should be serviceable. It's certainly much better than the accordion sac that came with some Pilot pens, like the G-500. I have one were the sac ossified and there is no viable replacement that works the same way.

On yours, it might be worthwhile to locate a donor pen. Something with a bad body and/or cap, but intact filling mechanism.

The only hard part of the repair was getting the nipple out. If had done it before it would not have been too bad. I wasted a lot of time trying to unscrew the section that was a solid piece of plastic. The sac repair was similar to other pens of the same vintage other than the sunk nipple. I have been using the pen for a while now and I really like how it writes. the only pen I like better from my collection is a Sheaffer Targa 1005 but they are close.

A lot of the fun is getting a working pen from junk. so far I have gotten every vintage pen I have bought except one, bought it for the intact converter, the pen was toast, working at least somewhat. A few definitely still need some nib work as they are very scratchy or have other issues, but most work well.