Bad heads on RL02: Worth replacing

The head likely has something on it that you missed. Use your finger to feel the head. Your finger is quite sensitive to tiny roughness. Of course, clean your finger oil off before putting it back in. Make sure that first landing area is smooth and flat. Almost all of the head needs to have the cushion of air. With things stationary, look at how the head comes down on the surface. The larger part needs to be parallel to the surface. Most heads have a slight curve on the leading edge to help trap the air. Dwight ________________________________ From: cctalk <cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org> on behalf of Chris Zach via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Monday, December 16, 2019 3:07 PM To: CCTalk mailing list <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Subject: Bad heads on RL02: Worth replacing So one of my RL02 drives (bought on Ebay years ago) is eating RL02 packs. Makes tings, then the disks have errors in my other RL02 drive. Took a bit to figure out which drive was eating what, but I'm 100% certain it's this newer drive. So pulled the heads. The top one had significant gunk on it, the bottom one a bit. Pics below. Top: https://i.imgur.com/FELhF9X.jpg Bottom: https://i.imgur.com/Tmsf5Nd.jpg With alcohol and lintless swabs I managed to clean both of the heads up. Top: https://i.imgur.com/gmACM4R.jpg Bottom: https://i.imgur.com/SfZQV5F.jpg Then put them back in the drive and mounted a scratch pack. With finger on the load/run I let the drive spin up and when I heard tinging I immediately spun down. Hopefully I didn't trash my scratch pack. Top head has gunk, bottom one had a few flecks, but looks pretty ok. Top: https://i.imgur.com/EAvgmuH.jpg Bottom: (picture didn't upload) Obviously the head is crashing, any idea why and if it's worth replacing the head or should I put this drive out for parts? Yes I cleaned the RL02 pack before putting it in. Never dull. CZ