WD 40 finally did the trick.
But I'm confused about how the lever is a channel indicator. This is an inductor tuner, but it has a clunk indent type mechanism in the front, so as you turn the channel knob it clunks directly to each channel, it's not a continuously variable tuning. Also the channel selector knob has a pointer on it? And notice that the outer brass shaft is cam shaped, so when you rotate that lever arm, it rocks the front end of the clunk mechanism off center, which in turn moves the inductor cores in and out about an 1/8" per each rotation of the arm. So the arm seems to be functioning as a fine tuning mechanism. But it's possible Belmont had a few variations on their basic design? The screws on the front of the clunk mech are the channel presets.
