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Old 15th Oct 2011, 8:47 am   #7
Mike Phelan
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Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: Near Leeds, West Yorkshire, UK
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Default The deck, specifics Part 3.

Record changer lubrication.

As many of these are half a century old, with the grease and oil of the same age it’s not surprising that trouble will arise.
If you only have one of these to overhaul, there’s no need to spend money on greases and oils that you might already have, so we’ll give a quick breakdown on this, followed by some detail. Preferred lubricants are in bold, but others will suffice:
Sintered bearings in motors, idlers and turntable bushes. 3 in 1, sewing machine oil, thin engine oil. Not clock oil.
Ball races. Any light grease, silicone grease, Vaseline.
Pickup spindle and arm bearing. Clock oil, 3 in 1, sewing machine oil, thin engine oil.
More details below.

Sintered bearings:

These are made from bronze dust compressed into a bush, so they appear to be solid, but are actually porous so they can soak up lubricant a bit like a sponge. Most motor bearings have sintered bushes surrounded by a felt ring which is soaked in oil
Commonly, sintered bearings are used in motor bearings, idlers and the large bush on the turntable spindles.
Quite often, someone has used grease or thick oil on these when they’ve dried up; probably solves the immediate fault, but means it will soon need lubricating again, and to do it properly, all the grease and other gunk will need soaking in petrol, IPA or similar cleaning fluid (not paraffin).
Ideally these bearings need heating, as does the oil. As the turntable and idler are difficult and inadvisable to move, just warming the oil in a metal container and leaving it to soak into the bush should suffice.

Ball races:

Commonly used on the turntable and sometimes on the pickup spindle. Wash out and apply light grease.
Various parts of the autochange mechanism like the cam gear track and spindle need greasing; the best ones are heavy greases like Molyslip or water pump grease, but anything from a motor accessory shop ought to do.
It is very important not to lubricate the parts of a velocity trip, nor any sliding bar that operates it from the pickup rotation.

The ideal to strive for might be to dismantle the entire deck, clean off everything and respray the various painted parts, but that might be after the first dozen you have repaired, and you will need to take lots of pictures! This is a convenient point at which to mention....

Deck underside mechanics:


Although most problems with slow/stiff/seized decks can be attributed to trip pawl, cam and motor bearing defects, the mechanics on the deck's underside can also need attention from time to time. Refer to the images in post #9 to see what it all looks like under there.

Present are lots of arms, linkages, plates, springs, circlips and grease; the latter in various states of usefulness or uselessness as the case may be. Complexity also varies, as mentioned elsewhere.

If, and only if, you're convinced the mechanics need attention, you can remove the deck (making careful note of where any disconnected wires should go) and operate it by hand in order to see how the mechanism functions. Remember to release the tonearm from its rest and take steps to ensure the tonearm isn't allowed to swing about unchecked and become damaged. Temporary removal of the stylus is also a wise idea.

Look for broken, missing or overly slack springs, same with circlips. Look around for hardened grease and for any foreign bodies which may have become jammed in the mechanism. On that latter point, it's surprising what is often found inside record player cabinets; old styli, old cartridges, paperwork, record and stylus cleaning brushes and so on. When a portable machine is turned onto its side for storage or transportation, these objects can easily find their way into the mechanism and become lodged therein.

So if you do find the need to dismantle all or part of the mechanism, familiarise yourself as mentioned above, make careful note of where everything goes - taking photographs if need be. If the reason is only degreasing and regreasing, you can often dismantle just one or two parts at a time as necessary. Hardened grease can be scraped off and any residue removed with WD40. For regreasing, any automotive grease is fine.

On the subject of WD40, as mentioned, this is good for removing old grease but ensure the WD40 doesn't go all over the show and remove all traces of it once it's done its degreasing work. A good idea is to spray some WD40 into an old cup and use an old toothbrush or fairly stiff artists paintbrush to work the fluid into where it's needed. Obviously, keep plenty of old rags to hand and use them frequently as you go along.
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Last edited by Darren-UK; 5th Nov 2011 at 4:38 pm. Reason: Last section added.
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