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McCurdy idler wheel

DurhamSud

DurhamSud

Member
I recently picked up a McCurdy HH12 with a Papst motor that I would like to restore and build a nice plinth for.

My first step is to do something about the rubber around the idler wheel. It has hardened and is not perfectly round.

Does anybody know if it can be restored? Or if it is possible to procure a replacement?

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.
 
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dogscanskate said:
AudioVault – Precision Idler Wheels for Audio Turntables

You can check him out, he's in Brossard iirc. Hope it helps!
Click to expand...
Audiovault makes excellent products, but they're limited to a few brands at the moment. Can't speak to custom work.

Phono and Turntable Idler Wheels and Turrets is a good start. If you have an old wheel, they and a few other spots can use it to recreate a new one. Some places want a core, like an old alternator. They'll rebuild it and sell it to the next guy.

That's not the most common table, so it might take some digging. If it uses the same wheel or size as another more common table they might have options.

Do remember that unless this is a double idler, outside diameter does not need to be the same, some variation is totally fine.
 
I don't know the company mentioned but I do know a lot of idler wheels made today are made of the wrong rubber and are not balanced or even very round.
What you can do is get the old one machined round and this in most cases exposes fresh rubber again.
Chris
 
Thanks for the link to AudioVault. I had not heard of them. They are not too far from where I live so that would be convenient. Since writing my post, I learned of Terry's Rubber Rollers and wrote to them. I'll see what they reply.

Chris. Thanks for the suggestion. I have been thinking to try to repair it myself. I saw a video of a guy who filled a depressed part the rubber with some crazy glue and then sanded it down until it went flush with the rest of the wheel. Seemed to work. I also heard that filing it down a bit will expose some fresh rubber.
 

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DurhamSud said:
Thanks for the link to AudioVault. I had not heard of them. They are not too far from where I live so that would be convenient. Since writing my post, I learned of Terry's Rubber Rollers and wrote to them. I'll see what they reply.

Chris. Thanks for the suggestion. I have been thinking to try to repair it myself. I saw a video of a guy who filled a depressed part the rubber with some crazy glue and then sanded it down until it went flush with the rest of the wheel. Seemed to work. I also heard that filing it down a bit will expose some fresh rubber.
Click to expand...
Just take it to a machine shop and machine it till the dent is gone
 
I didn't have too much joy trying to dress my McCurdy's wheel. It felt like there was not so much a dent as a hard seam right through it. Since McCurdy's OFF position is a neutral with no contact, I expect parking dents are relatively uncommon. Of course the bigger problem was that the bearing that had been pressed into it (a teflon or Nylon, not sure what the originals were) had been slightly damaged by a burr on the end of axle. I swapped it out for an Oilite, but it also got scored on installation:( (I made an extra effort to get rid of that burr for the next step)
So I ended up firing off a product request to Bruno at Audio Vault through their website, and he offered to build a prototype if we could meet up and he could use the original to take specs from. He did say that it was only a prototype since his usual policy is to have at least one example of the running table in order to try it out on, and he didn't have a McCurdy himself. Part of that is going to be about what the axle tolerances are across multiple examples. Considering these things shipped with multiple different variations,(differnt motors, different bearing housings, different motor suspension arrangements...) it wouldn't be surprising if there were significant dimensional differences in idler axles too.
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I did notice on their website on the page about RoK parts that development has been deferred due to some sort of eye issue, so I'm not sure what the current state of affairs is. Maybe they're just selling through a stockpile of pre-built wheels while the eye situation gets figured out? My understanding is that AudioVault is just Bruno and his wife, and he's the machinist and she handles the business, and hand modelling duties. So they could be on pause for new McCurdy wheels for a good bit.
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You should post what dimensions and stuff you can to this McCurdy thread it would be good to build out some sort of public knowledge base like the Rec o Kut thread: Rek-O-Kut
 
DurhamSud said:
I recently picked up a McCurdy HH12 with a Papst motor that I would like to restore and build a nice plinth for.

My first step is to do something about the rubber around the idler wheel. It has hardened and is not perfectly round.

Does anybody know if it can be restored? Or if it is possible to procure a replacement?

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...
The table is a ch12
Goodluck with it .
 
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