Technics SL-BD3 Auto return not working

[beleturntabl]

Hello everyone,

yesterday I was walking down the street and found a Technics SL-BD3 sitting there, I took it home and fixed everything that needed to be fixed, through youtube tutorials and so on..
everything works fine but the auto return, I looked in the instruction manual and it says to "pop off rubber cap that sits close to the tonearm, put the tonearm in the center of the vinyl and the auto return screw will appear" thing is, after doing this there is no screw appearing in the hole that came from the rubber cap.

anyone know if the screw can be lost or taken off? the TT was already without rubber cap when I found it

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[avidquest]

Did you check the little center gear on the spindle? They seem to crack with time. I just ordered mine for the SL-B2, and it's supposed to be a common problem with most of the Technics belt drive tables. A bunch of people sell 3D printed copies on eBay for the various models, not sure if they are interchangeable. My auto return still works but the gear was visibly cracked nonetheless.

Also, it might be the case that the screw you're looking for is recessed beneath the hole...did you try looking in with a flashlight? If you take it apart again try looking over the innards to make sure everything seems correctly aligned. You might be able to locate the mechanism with the screw in question from underneath and check if it looks right.

What sort of work did you have to do in there, greasing and such?

 

[beleturntabl]

I actually didn’t have to do any greasing and such, just changing the height of the tonearm, ordering a belt, everything was working without needing to do much, just the auto return isn’t working, the tonearm basically just stays in the middle of the record.

this is what I see when I move the tonearm towards the middle the only thing that looks like a screw is the first thing you see, that white plastic looking screw, but the instructions explicitly say to put it in the middle of the record, so I don’t think it’s that one
the only video I found on youtube about it is of a guy with a SL-B22 if I’m not mistaken and he also doesn’t have auto return working, and he basically glues a metal screw in that “dotted” circle you see in the video I posted (idk how to call it)