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Realistic 909 FF/RW gear rubber liquefied!, how to clean, replace?

absynth

absynth

New Member
Hi there, so I have recently gotten my hands on a well cared for Realistic 909 Reel to Reel. It worked great when I tested it out at their house. It played, it recorded, it FF and RW..

Then I got it home and it was fine for maybe 10min and before I knew it the FF and RW feature began to degraded until it eventually just stopped working but PLAY still worked.

Upon closer inspection I could see that there was a space where something used to be, but where is it? thought maybe it crumbled or something.. old rubber can get hard and break / flake off.. nothing could be found but this:

p.jpeg



I noticed this liquid sticky stuff on the two reels..

p.jpeg


p.jpeg



I figured oh this is just maybe some kind of dried up grease.. nasty stuff, but not what I'm looking for, but after some poking around I'm pretty much convinced that for whatever reason the part that is missing is in fact this stuff that i thought was grease..

So now that the part is liquefied and even somewhat splattered inside the device like some tar baby horror movie

p.jpeg


I am hoping someone might have a picture of what the part SHOULD look like inside so I can work with someone to have a replacement part made

Also anyone have any tips on how the heck I can clean that rubber carnage off my parts without damaging the reels or delicate parts around it.

The part (I believe) that is missing is where you see the shiny sticky tar on this spindle..

p.jpeg


Any tips / pics / advice would be welcome. I'm really excited to get this working again. The unit is inspite of this one flaw in very good shape and working well for my needs, I just need to get FF and RW working again because being able to play / record alone is going to make using this thing very unpleasant.. heh :)

I did try to remove as much of this spindle as possible but the rubber sticky wheel didn't want to come off but I did have these parts cooperate (the fuzzy thing was one of the two break pad type parts, one fell off already and i need to replace that and re-adhese this one)

p.jpeg


Thanks to oldvinyldude, rojoknox and others who offered help with my initial post that was about my Sharp curbside find that sparked my new obsession with having a R2R to bounce things through..

I did reach out to Terry about this piece and I am hoping someone out there might have a working Realistic 909 or pioneer equivalent that I could see what the part should look like other than highway road kill! :)

I'm needing to clean that concentrated evil from the reels as well and need to figure out what would be effective without using something that might damage other parts of the unit.

Sincerely,
Caleb

Thanks,
Caleb
 
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"Also anyone have any tips on how the heck I can clean that rubber carnage off my parts without damaging the reels or delicate parts around it." (quoted)

This is all I can give you any advice with. It comes from experience and may not be the best, but it worked wonders for me in my same scenario. Use plenty of Q Tips and rubbing alcohol (at least 70%) and just keep going.....it does come off no matter what it may look like at first, LOL!! I also used Hand Sanitizer to clean my hands afterward,,,,,works great as well. Hope this is of some help.
 
Awesome thanks for the advice and verification that it is working in spite of what i imagine it will be like.. heh heh.. it is definitely concentrated evil.. as documented in Time Bandits!

Time-Bandits-Evil-Leftovers.jpg
 
absynth said:
Hi there, so I have recently gotten my hands on a well cared for Realistic 909 Reel to Reel. It worked great when I tested it out at their house. It played, it recorded, it FF and RW..

Then I got it home and it was fine for maybe 10min and before I knew it the FF and RW feature began to degraded until it eventually just stopped working but PLAY still worked.

Upon closer inspection I could see that there was a space where something used to be, but where is it? thought maybe it crumbled or something.. old rubber can get hard and break / flake off.. nothing could be found but this:

p.jpeg



I noticed this liquid sticky stuff on the two reels..

p.jpeg


p.jpeg



I figured oh this is just maybe some kind of dried up grease.. nasty stuff, but not what I'm looking for, but after some poking around I'm pretty much convinced that for whatever reason the part that is missing is in fact this stuff that i thought was grease..

So now that the part is liquefied and even somewhat splattered inside the device like some tar baby horror movie

p.jpeg


I am hoping someone might have a picture of what the part SHOULD look like inside so I can work with someone to have a replacement part made

Also anyone have any tips on how the heck I can clean that rubber carnage off my parts without damaging the reels or delicate parts around it.

The part (I believe) that is missing is where you see the shiny sticky tar on this spindle..

p.jpeg


Any tips / pics / advice would be welcome. I'm really excited to get this working again. The unit is inspite of this one flaw in very good shape and working well for my needs, I just need to get FF and RW working again because being able to play / record alone is going to make using this thing very unpleasant.. heh :)

I did try to remove as much of this spindle as possible but the rubber sticky wheel didn't want to come off but I did have these parts cooperate (the fuzzy thing was one of the two break pad type parts, one fell off already and i need to replace that and re-adhese this one)

p.jpeg


Thanks to oldvinyldude, rojoknox and others who offered help with my initial post that was about my Sharp curbside find that sparked my new obsession with having a R2R to bounce things through..

I did reach out to Terry about this piece and I am hoping someone out there might have a working Realistic 909 or pioneer equivalent that I could see what the part should look like other than highway road kill! :)

I'm needing to clean that concentrated evil from the reels as well and need to figure out what would be effective without using something that might damage other parts of the unit.

Sincerely,
Caleb

Thanks,
Caleb
Click to expand...
Caleb,

I just recently got one of these decks myself.

It has no FF or RW either.

I was wondering if you ever got this fixed and if you could repost pics of it.

I realize this is almost a 2 year old post but, I just cannot seem to find much information on this deck.

Thanks, Darrell
 
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