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AR XA starter motor mounting plate?

plbeard

plbeard

Active Member
A question for someone who knows the assembly of the original two-motor style
AR XA turntables.

I have an AR XA starter motor (the helper guy) that came out of its mounting plate in shipping.
These have an unholy looking, jack-leg "bracket" made out of thin folded metal, about the weight of a tuna can's steel,
buttressing each motor into the chassis, but I can't believe they do much supportive/ structural, right?
The flimsy buttress had fallen off the starter motor, too.

In any case, the motor floats free of the mounting plate--was this originally a friction fit?
It didn't "float" in this bracket, held in place by the sheet metal buttress, did it?!
ar XA bracket-b.jpg

Advice about how to re-secure this motor in the triangular mounting plate would be helpful.
 
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plbeard said:
A question for someone who knows the assembly of the original two-motor style
AR XA turntables.

I have an AR XA starter motor (the helper guy) that came out of its mounting plate in shipping.
These have an unholy looking, jack-leg "bracket" made out of thin folded metal, about the weight of a tuna can's steel,
buttressing each motor into the chassis, but I can't believe they do much supportive/ structural, right?
The flimsy buttress had fallen off the starter motor, too.

In any case, the motor floats free of the mounting plate--was this originally a friction fit?
It didn't "float" in this bracket, held in place by the sheet metal buttress, did it?!
View attachment 1725645

Advice about how to re-secure this motor in the triangular mounting plate would be helpful.
Click to expand...
A message to AK member Marc Morin will get you all the answers you need.
 
It was bolted to the top plate, but I removed the three screws to see if I could pop the triangular plate back onto the motor. It won't be easy--
this was probably done with some sort of press at the time of manufacture.
 
plbeard said:
It was bolted to the top plate, but I removed the three screws to see if I could pop the triangular plate back onto the motor. It won't be easy--
this was probably done with some sort of press at the time of manufacture.
Click to expand...
would have to be, about the only advice i can give is what you positioned in PM.......epoxy it back in place
 
loudnoises said:
While the topic is hot, would you recommend a specific epoxy for this situation?
Click to expand...
not by brand name......lots of those. a 5 min epoxy......check the yield strength posted on the package, go with the highest. On on the outside, it doesn't matter getting too much on as long as it doesn't interfere with the mounting holes
 
Others explained in PM that the strange, tuna-can weight, folded-metal strips are shielding and do nothing structural.
I note that on different models (in surveying photos on the web) the shielding was itself was itself glued (I think these were earlier) onto the chassis;
on mine, there are steel clips that were glued to the chassis, and the shielding tucked into the clips.
Some of these had popped off and will be re-fixed in place, too. This was a nice example of this model prior to its being shipped to me a few days ago;
now it has a number of problems, due to poor packing and likely some bad handling in transit.
 
The Synchron motor case was a press-fit. You might be able to "re-press" it if you're careful, but you can still buy these NOS from surplussales.com.

I removed the motor shields from my table years ago to service the motors, and after determining that there was no noticeable issue running it without them, just left them off.
 
So after trying (and failing) to press-fit the old starter motor to its mounting plate (with some minor, negative consequences I won't detail), I got a NOS starter motor--thanks for the tip. It has its own mounting plate, but a different, four-holed mount, so to avoid having to redrill and tap four new holes in the AR's deck, I epoxied the new motor to the old mounting plate and re-installed. This worked. This was only one problem with this turntable, though. The turntable is an early model and was intact, all-original, decent shape (with no audio test, according to the seller), but it was shipped to me, despite my request for care, haphazardly in a single box. Fed-ex gets some credit for violent handling, but the biggest cause of damage was an unsecured tone-arm counterweight, which became a missile in the box. Naturally the original tone-arm rest was broken (replaced with a Sansui spare on hand). But the most amazing thing the freed weight accomplished was smashing the original headshell as if with a hammer. It was really remarkable--the headshell had been knocked from the arm and was in pieces in the box. One of the 1940s-telephone-receiver-style wires off the tone-arm (human-hair thin wires on these models) to the connector strip was also off. I didn't have too much hope that this was all of this poor deck's issues, but once I re-soldered that wire, and took care of the mechanical set-up, it actually sounds great. The headshell in the image is a second I have.
AR XA 1964-2-s.jpg
 
The original tonearm rests are fragile as hell anyway. Mine came to me intact but I broke it on my own just a couple days after I got it. Sporting a spare from a Scott that I bought to use as a cleaning base. There are nicer ones on the auction site.
 
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