As my signature shows it, I recently purchased the machine in the title. It looks great with almost no signs of wear (the plastic buttons are the first that will show wear as they become shiny relatively fast).
So I plugged it in and it worked great. Nice clear sound, precise controls and a quiet mechanism. I was very happy.
The thing was put in a closed space in my furniture as I don't have a proper stand/gear oriented furniture. It has doors and keeps the machine dust free. Running it from that space I started hearing a rhytmic noise when the unit was powered. It went on all the time clonc, clonc, clonc, clonc. The sound wasn't loud but it was audible, amplified by the space in which the unit was in.
This scared me. I thought at two possible sources: craced/rotten/offcenter flywheel or a bent rotor. I have the rotten flywheel problem on an old R2R and there is no hope of ever fixing it. Soon it will crumble and will become dead weight.
I proceeded to opening the unit up. Everything seemed fine, flywheel looked ok, no wobble and no cracks, nice clean metal, the motor looked good, but the sound was still there. I stopped it and began to turn the motor shaft by hand and discovered this:
The belt broke at one point and someone made another belt by cutting a longer one to size and glueing it back together. That point was thickened and caused the clonk sound as it passed over the motor pulley. It had to be replaced.
I do not know if this is the right place for the thread but I put it here since it will be the first place where people will be searching for tape related subjects.
Back on belt replacement. I searched the net for replacements and tutorials. Found the belt kit (main belt and door belt) on ebay for 8.5 euro. The tutorial part was harder, although I found a thread about the belt replacement on tapeheads I couldn't see the pictures although I had an account. Oh well... Had to rely on words and my "skill".
Here is a picture comparing the belt on the deck and the replacement that was going to be put in:
Now let's begin. The back plate is held in place by three screws. Two in the left and one on the right marked with red arrows. To be able to get to the one in the right the power transformer had to be moved out of the way.
I didn't have a magnetic screwdriver. The screws on the left were easy to unscrew, but the one in the lower right corner was a pain. Hard to get to and if completely unscrewed it would be a real PITA to put back so I unscrewed it only half way. This way I could tilt the whole plate back to take the belt off.
It took a little fiddeling but eventually it came off, in one piece too. To put the other one in was a bit harder, but I eventually I got the trick. Alligned it with tweesers on the flywheel and then just stretched it over the motor pulley.
I had no previous experience on replacing belts, but I found the operation not that hard. It took half an hour from taking the cover off to putting it back. The tape deck works great, speed seems fine, and there is no more clonk.
Hope this will be of use to other people.
So I plugged it in and it worked great. Nice clear sound, precise controls and a quiet mechanism. I was very happy.
The thing was put in a closed space in my furniture as I don't have a proper stand/gear oriented furniture. It has doors and keeps the machine dust free. Running it from that space I started hearing a rhytmic noise when the unit was powered. It went on all the time clonc, clonc, clonc, clonc. The sound wasn't loud but it was audible, amplified by the space in which the unit was in.
This scared me. I thought at two possible sources: craced/rotten/offcenter flywheel or a bent rotor. I have the rotten flywheel problem on an old R2R and there is no hope of ever fixing it. Soon it will crumble and will become dead weight.
I proceeded to opening the unit up. Everything seemed fine, flywheel looked ok, no wobble and no cracks, nice clean metal, the motor looked good, but the sound was still there. I stopped it and began to turn the motor shaft by hand and discovered this:
The belt broke at one point and someone made another belt by cutting a longer one to size and glueing it back together. That point was thickened and caused the clonk sound as it passed over the motor pulley. It had to be replaced.
I do not know if this is the right place for the thread but I put it here since it will be the first place where people will be searching for tape related subjects.
Back on belt replacement. I searched the net for replacements and tutorials. Found the belt kit (main belt and door belt) on ebay for 8.5 euro. The tutorial part was harder, although I found a thread about the belt replacement on tapeheads I couldn't see the pictures although I had an account. Oh well... Had to rely on words and my "skill".
Here is a picture comparing the belt on the deck and the replacement that was going to be put in:
Now let's begin. The back plate is held in place by three screws. Two in the left and one on the right marked with red arrows. To be able to get to the one in the right the power transformer had to be moved out of the way.
I didn't have a magnetic screwdriver. The screws on the left were easy to unscrew, but the one in the lower right corner was a pain. Hard to get to and if completely unscrewed it would be a real PITA to put back so I unscrewed it only half way. This way I could tilt the whole plate back to take the belt off.
It took a little fiddeling but eventually it came off, in one piece too. To put the other one in was a bit harder, but I eventually I got the trick. Alligned it with tweesers on the flywheel and then just stretched it over the motor pulley.
I had no previous experience on replacing belts, but I found the operation not that hard. It took half an hour from taking the cover off to putting it back. The tape deck works great, speed seems fine, and there is no more clonk.
Hope this will be of use to other people.