TU58 capstan solutions anyone ?

On Wednesday (11/06/2013 at 10:21AM -0500), Ethan Dicks wrote: I have also restored two TU-58 drives recently following pretty much Ethan's recipe. It was difficult to trim the tubing cleanly so I also "polished" it with a Dremel and sanding bit. My problem is now the tapes. The rubber belt in the tapes also ages and as soon as you spin up a tape in your newly repaired drive, that belt will break. I've successfully rebuilt maybe (5) tapes from several dozen by stealing what appear to be good belts from crappy looking tapes but even after complete disassembly, transfer of the belt and reassembly, my luck has been that that belt will now break. There is also an issue with some kind of lubricant in certain tapes that has turned to sticky goo rather than a lubricant. On these tapes, the tape bobbins hang up on their spindles, which puts further load on the belt and causes it to break... or if it doesn't break, causes a drive fault because the tape isn't moving like it should. Some of these I've recovered by cleaning the lubricant from the spindles and everywhere else I can find it inside the cartridge and then replacing it with tiny amounts of a teflon lubricant. But, too much work, IMO. I restored the drive for h{istor,yster}ical reasons but I can't see ever really using it again unless somebody starts making new tapes :-) Chris -- Chris Elmquist