11 May
2010
11 May
'10
8:07 p.m.
Mr. Dicks,
Failing a replacement BELT, here is something else that you might try. I
have no idea how well it would work.
Ordinary automotive oil seals have within them a garter spring, that goes
around the lip of the seal and provides some pressure on the sealing surface.
These springs are easy to find: they are on the outside of the lip (usually)
hidden behind a small flap of rubber. Push this flap toward the radial
center of the seal and you can see the spring. It is simple to extract with
a fingernail.
If you need to thread the spring through something to get it on the pulleys,
the spring has a conical end that threads into a square-cut end.
Naturally the spring has elasticity; I don't know if this will defeat its
purpose or not.
If a belt cannot be obtained, you might try this.
Kurt
Hi, All,
I've been fiddling with PETs lately and have found to my dismay that
my original c. 1978 C2N just doesn't push the tape along as fast as it should.
I opened it up, cleaned some minor funk out of the innards, but the old drive
belt is just a little sloppy and has a kink on it where it sat around the motor
pulley for a number of years between uses. The symptom is that FF and REW
speeds are not uniform, there's no real "grab" when pulling on the belt or
manually spinning different pulleys, and there is visible slackness in the
belt. Loads are spotty, and they mostly fail. The "secret" trick of
holding down
the ">" key when the tape is moving does show that the CPU sees flux
transitions, but it fails to recognize what's on the tape(s) as valid data most
of the time. I know the tapes are good, and a slipping belt explains all the
observed symptoms.
It's an easy enough part to replace, but does anyone know where to
get a proper replacement from? It's a continuous rubber belt, with a
square cross-section just under 1mm on a side, probably about 250mm-
300mm long, give or take a bit (I didn't measure it). It looks entirely
ordinary in the context of 1970s cassette transports.
Thanks,