Rubber wheel on XC-12 tape deck not making contact

[LaunderMan2008]

As I said, the rubber wheel that allows the tape deck to go into play isn’t making proper contact with one of the tape reel winders and I have already tried to put some electrical tape on the metal part to the left of the wheel (circled in orange) and it didn’t work very well, I have also tried to adjust the screw on the bottom of the arm that brings the rubber wheel into contact with the reel winder to bring it in closer but that didn’t work too, only pushing it in helps it to work.

 

Whoever designed this thought it was a great idea back then but now that turns out to be a bad idea when they could have used gears or normal belts.

 

 

Thank you for any help or advice.

 

[_The Doctor__]

You can replace the rubber on the wheel you had to push and you can check/adjust the tension on the lever that engages that wheel as well. Follow the lever.

[LaunderMan2008]

@_The Doctor__

 

I have tried unscrewing the screw slightly for the lever and then pushing the lever with some force after screwing it back on (I held it to prevent the screw from moving it back to how it was) but it didn’t move at all and I tried it but the take up winder had no change.

 

i didn’t try to unscrew it too far as I don’t want lots of little pieces everywhere, just enough to move it by hand but not enough to undo it completely.

Edited May 30 by LaunderMan2008

[_The Doctor__]

remember the lever is connected in concert with other parts of the mechanism, sometimes pushing in the direction you want to go can make it worse by slightly bending things that normally provide tension themselves. You can return items to their proper shape or slightly more toward the desired position, but again. You can only make up for so much rubber or spring tension. I would make sure everything is moving easily and greased/lubed and all parts are moving to the proper positions in tandem.

[LaunderMan2008]

I am currently unable to work on it further because annoyingly, a spring has popped out and gone to the backrooms, so unless I find the spring there, I will not be able to continue my troubleshooting.

 

I do remember having a spring like that in my spare screws bin but it too has disappeared, I’ll check my bin of cogs because there are springs there too but unlikely that I will find a suitable one to use.

 

The spring that popped out was the lever spring that I was working on, I was trying to compress it so that it could pull the lever a little harder but I guess I won’t be using the cassette deck until I find a replacement and also in today’s time we do not have brick and mortar hardware stores that actually carry stuff like that anymore, all we have is a screwfix and toolstation that only carry stuff for home improvement, now we have to order stuff online and wait to get it and I don’t have the patience to wait because I am also waiting for floppy disks to come.