MB Fountain Pen Help

[NewEnthusiast]

Hi All

Appealing to your collective wisdom. My daily driver is a MB 144. About six weeks ago it started acting like it was "running out" the whole time (I haven't dropped it or exposed it to any significant trauma that I recall). By that I mean there was ink in the piston converter but as I was writing, it wasn't flowing through the pen and on to the paper. The line therefore got lighter and lighter until it started skipping. I am able to fill the pen OK and it will continue to write if I force ink into the nib using the piston converter.

So far I have cleaned out the pen with water and also a dilute solution of ammonia and detergent. I have also manually cleaned off a lot of gunk and had a look at the nib under 20x magnification. From what I can see, the tines on the nib appear to be aligned OK.

Before I send it away to get fixed does anyone have any other suggestions of fixes I can try at home?

James