My niece has a Stylus C84, and the ink tubes are totally clogged. How do I get the carriage out for cleaning, or is there an easy way to do it?
You can’t get it out without disassembling the whole printer.
Several years ago, I paid about $20 for an Epson repair kit which turned out to be a bottle of isopropyl alcohol and a syringe.
You can accomplish the same thing at your local drugstore for under a dollar.
The success rate was about 2 out of 10 printers worked following the treatment, so expect the printer to go to the dumpster, but it’s worth a shot.
Fold up some paper towels and put them under the printhead. Then fill the syringe with alcohol and insert the tip of the syringe into each of the holes in the printhead and force some alcohol in there. Let it sit overnight.
The next day, put ink cartridges in the printer and run the Epson head cleaning utility about 50 times…Sometimes they’ll start working after 10 pages or so, but I saw one that actually took 50 pages.
Don’t go out and buy new cartridges to do this because if you throw out the printer, you won’t be able to find a brand new printer that will use those cartridges and they’ll be useless. You can get compatible cartridges for that machine for under $10 and they work just as well as the new ones.
Good luck 
Just to add: I assume you’ve tried the head cleaning utility already. If you haven’t try it before you use the alcohol. If the printer’s just been sitting up for a couple of months, it may not be necessary to go through all that. It’s usually printers that have been sitting for a year or more that require the more drastic measures.
I just had to do this with the Epson printer where I work. I ran the head cleaning utility about twenty times before it finally cleared up. It used up most of the ink in the cartridge.
Can’t vouch for wether they actually work but I did recently see some cleaning cartridges, presumably filled with isopropanol, that you run in the printer in place of the standard ink cartridges.
My advice would be to trash the printer; take it apart and sell the two motors on eBay (It used to be the case that they would be stepper motors, but the C series has two ordinary (often identical) DC motors and a system of shaft encoders), then put the money toward a printer made by some manufacturer other than Epson - i.e. one where the print heads are built into the bottom of the cartridge and are replaced every time you change the ink.
I recently had the pleasure of dissecting a number of Epson Inkjets (that’s how I know about the motors), all of which had become irretrievably clogged in the print head due to infrequent use.
The other thing you might find interesting is that there is a tank containing an enormous block of absorbent wadding underneath the print carriage - there are two apertures opening into it - one at the right hand side of the carriage where the print head parks, the other is about one third in from the left hand side - you know that interminable ‘dance’ that Epson printers do every now and again, (when all you really want them to do is print)? - what the printer is actually doing at this time is sluicing huge amounts of ink through the print heads to clean them; in my honest estimation (allowing for the absorbency of the sponge and the drying out of the ink), the printers I took apart had wasted about half of all the ink they ever saw just doing the head cleaning dance.
Thanks for the tips. I have good news and bad news to report.
First, the good news. I got a foot of 1/8" plastic tubing and a turkey injector. I put the tubing on the nipples in the printer carriage and the end of the syringe and used that to force alcohol through the print heads. It worked pretty well.
Now, the bad news. I used the head cleaning and test page utilities about a dozen times until I got a low-ink warning (these were new cartridges). I never did get any ink on paper.
What now?
1/8" ID, that is. Makes a nice snug fit.
Like Mangetout, I too have dissected an old Epson 600 printer, by hurling the thing out of a second floor window onto concrete. This after feeding more ink through it in an attempt to unclog the thing than it would have cost to buy a new one. (Incrementally, you understand. I didn’t buy a whole printer’s-worth of cartridges in one go.)
Being socially responsible, I went out and disposed of the bits I could find, including the great wad of absorbant padding, still damp with sixty-odd pounds worth of ink. Being a student at the time, my bedroom was my office and I had been sleeping in the same room as this solvent-laden sponge. I was not pleased and swore off Epson for ever more.
When I finally joined the ranks of the gainfully employed, I was chagrined to find that my employer used Epson inkjet printers exclusively. And they worked. They even had some venerable 600s, going strong. And so I have learned.
Epson printers print very well and can give good service, if you use them every day. The printers at work get at most a week of non-use every year, at Christmas. But if you print rarely, they will clog. Even if you don’t print rarely, they will sometimes clog. At best you will feed the absorbent wad a lot of ink keeping them clean, at worst the thing will let you down when you most need it and never work again.
I use Canon at home.
I would love to take my Epson out to the country for a little target practice, but it is an all-in-one w/scanner and I’m not ready to buy a new scanner yet. I bought a cartridge refill kit online (had to buy a $20 chip resetter too) and wasted enough ink to fill the damn thing twice. I saw an HP deskjet on sale for $50 and pounced on it. I haven’t needed to refill the HP yet, but at least if it clogs, I can replace the cartridge and get back to printing for less money than a new printer.
Oh, and the Epson scanner driver refuses to play nice with my laptop so it’s days are numbered.