this is not the video i planned to make about this 1986 sanyo stereo system
i intended to include it as part of a video on another topic but first i needed to get its
cassette decks working again because actually for the past few years they haven't been but i
didn't pay much attention to it because i have better cassette decks i can use
and i figured it just needed new belts which on a simple mechanism like this is really not worth
making a video about in fact it takes longer to open the cabinet than it does to change the belts
but when i did open the cabinet i discovered that the original belts are still perfectly fine
maybe a little bit loose but they're certainly not broken or
melting or anything they're still perfectly intact and it should be functional but yet it's not when
i hit play or any other function i can hear the motor running but the tape doesn't move
the problem is not with the belts or the motor you see this white plastic post with a spring on it
it's not supposed to be sticking out like that and rubbing against the flywheel
that's what was keeping it from turning it turns out this
plastic post is actually part of the pause button mechanism
i can give you a better look at it in this mechanism i took out of a cheap new boom box
here's the pause button and when i push it in
you can see this arm moves back and forth to latch and unlatch the pause function and as part of that
there's that white plastic post with the spring on it but you can see in this case there's plenty of
distance between it and the flywheel so it's not rubbing and that's the way it's supposed to be
here's another cassette deck which has the pause button mechanism in clear view it's not hidden
underneath the flywheel so we can get a better look at it there you can see that white plastic
collar the spring and there's a black plastic peg it's mounted on and only thing keeping this collar
on the peg is friction it's simply a friction fit and what happens over time is that black
plastic peg slightly shrinks over time causing the collar to pop off due to the spring tension
and when it's free like this not covered by the flywheel
this thing just pops off entirely with the spring along with it
you end up with loose parts rattling around inside your cassette player and your pause
button no longer works but otherwise the cassette player is unaffected because it can still rotate
whereas in this sanyo player it tried to pop off but he got blocked by the flywheel
so that's what happened here this white plastic collar is no longer fitting on the black plastic
peg it's mounted on but i have a way to fix that unfortunately to get to that i'll need to remove
this entire mechanism unplug all the wires going to it take off the belts and remove this flywheel
and i did actually order new belts because that's what i thought the problem was in
the first place so i'll put the new belts on anyway even though it doesn't need it
better to do it now than have to take it apart and do it again later
i removed the mechanism and took the belts off the flywheel this one came off entirely the other
one is trapped by that pause mechanism that's pressed up against the flywheel
so i need to remove the flywheel now which is permanently attached to the capstan shaft
which is what actually pulls the tape through the mechanism
and that's held in place of a tiny washer there that you need to pry off
there you can see the washer is actually split so you have to try to open up that gap and pry
it off it's not difficult to do but it's very small and you have to be careful not to lose that
so now i'm going to try to do it on camera which may be easier said than done because it's always
more difficult to do something intricate like this when you have a camera in the way
okay now i got it off i just need to carefully pull it and there it is oops
don't worry i didn't lose it there it is so now i can remove that flywheel and hopefully that pause
mechanism thing won't go flying
okay there it is
just remove this flywheel entirely
take that other belt off
and there's the parts we need to fix so there it is the white plastic collar and the spring
don't lose that there's that black plastic post it fits onto and this is the other
part you don't want to lose that's what actually operates the pause mechanism
and here's what i'm going to use to fix it regular old-fashioned slow drying clear glue
not super glue i discovered the hard way that if you try to use super glue it's too thin
and it seeps out of this collar and onto the spring and you don't want to glue that spring
if you do your pause button is going to jam and you push the button to pause it and it's going
to stay pushed in so you want to use this glue because it's thicker it will not leak out of that
collar and onto the spring it'll stay in place holding the collar onto that black plastic post
i'm going to use a toothpick to add a little drop of glue
actually this is probably too much so i'm going to try to wipe some of that off
add a little drop of glue
inside that cap
maybe one more little drop of glue in there
the thing is you don't want it spill outside of that so that maybe
actually a little bit too much i'm going to use a pointed cotton swab to try to wipe off any excess
we just want to glue inside the cap not on the outside of it there you can see i
already got that spring on the peg so now i just have to put the cap on it
and there it is
there's the pause button working and this is slow drying glue so i'm going to leave it in place for
at least an hour before i reassemble everything and now from that side angle you can see
it's not sticking out as far as it was before so now it should not rub against the flywheel
in fact we can test that right now oops yeah make sure you put that washer there
there's the flywheel and there's enough gap that
it's not going to rub so just let it dry and then i'll finish reassembling
okay so it's been a couple hours since the last clip i installed the new belts
even though the old ones were still fine it still spins freely without any interference
from that pause mechanism that i glued back in place not much clearance but there's enough
that doesn't rub and more importantly the pause button is now working perfectly well
while i have this whole mechanism out and have good access to it i took the opportunity to clean
the head and the capstan and pinch roller and the part of the buttons here which are normally hidden
by the bezel so i could get all the dirt out of that now i just need to install that little washer
on the capstan shaft there it is and i think the best way to do this is to you have to hold the
flywheel from the back so it doesn't pop out you want to try to get it onto
the capstan and just lower it down until it clicks into place like i believe it just did
yep see that gap is a little bit wider than before but
as long as that's holding in place it should be fine
and it is in that little notch where it belongs so that's the easy way i found to put it back on you
put it on the tip of the capstan shaft and you just slide it down until it clicks into place
and now this whole mechanism is pretty much complete just need to reinstall it and test it out
the repaired mechanism is now reinstalled and connected and i actually already did
the other one yesterday which is how i was able to learn from my mistakes
it's all back together now and for the first time
in actually a couple of years i can use this system to play tapes
and the pause button works
same thing with the right side deck
and all it took was adding that little drop of glue to repair the pause button mechanism
the right side playback only deck has automatic tape type detection for chrome and metal tapes
as it says right here on the door but the strange thing is the left side recording deck
can only record on normal and metal tapes it does not have a chrome position
i thought maybe the metal position would also work for recording on chrome tapes
but sure enough here in the manual it only mentions recording on metal and normal tapes
it says you can play chrome tapes with the switch set to the metal position but doesn't
say anything about recording on chrome tapes and again in the specifications
it lists the frequency response for normal and metal tape but does not list chrome tape
you may have noticed this button labeled bias mode but that's a misnomer it has nothing to do with
whether you're recording on normal or high bias tape this is better known as a beat cut switch
for recording from AM radio as explained in the manual it says when recording from an AM
station interference in the form of a beat howling or whistling may sometimes appear
in this case simply set this switch to the other position
for example i'm recording from a station on 820 AM and maybe you can hear that annoying whistle
in the background but if i push this button the whistle disappears conversely there are some other
frequencies where you get a whine with the button pushed in but releasing it gets rid of the whine
and now i'm ready to do some high speed dubbing
it has synchro start so it doesn't actually start recording on this deck
until i put my source tape into this deck and hit play
i wonder if you can get a copyright claim for playing a song at twice the normal speed
i'm glad i was able to get both cassette decks in this 1986 sanyo stereo system fully working again
because i'm very fond of this system and i'll leave you with
some music i've recorded using it on sony xr type 4 metal cassette tape