TZ8x DLT III cartridge - torn leader

I've been trying to read data from some ~2000 era DLT III cartridges that were written on a TZ87. The first one read OK. But the second one failed and it seems that the leader was torn off. I tried a new drive and a second cartridge has failed the same way (the leader was there, now it's not). My immediate problem is that I now have two drives (a TZ88 and a TZ870 that fail POST (all LEDs blink). I guess I need to open them up, fish out the stray leader and fix them up somehow. Does anyone have any experience of doing this? My second problem is that I'd quite like to stop this from happening again. I'm guessing that it happened because the cartridge mechanism was jammed. I've just played around with a TK50-K cartridge and if I jam the two release mechanisms (using the "nose" of two pliers), open the "tape hatch" and gently pull the tape, it moves. Then I can "rewind" it and it's back to the way it was. I'm wondering whether this is safe to do on the DLT III tapes I still want to recover? Is it likely to at least tell me which tapes are likely to fail and which might load properly? My third problem i that I have two cartridges without a leader. Is this something that can be rectified? Thanks for any useful information. Antonio -- Antonio Carlini antonio at acarlini.com