Sony TC-K81 Tape Deck

This tape deck was delivered to me complete with a set of belts, it seemed the owner had tried himself and found it too difficult to do, normally I would turn something away that had been tampered with but I didn’t want to see something so nice end up in the bin, so I took the job on.

I soon found that belts weren’t the problem as hitting the play button produced some clicks and whirring, but nothing else, yes it sounded like the belts were slipping but as I had just replaced them it seemed the problem was elsewhere. The deck was stripped down again so I could study what was happening when the play button was pressed. The solenoid was firing, that was the click I could hear, and this should release a cam gear to flick anti clockwise and engage with the gear under the flywheel in order to lift the mechanism into it’s playback position. The cam gear, although being released by the solenoid, wasn’t going anywhere, I found this to be because the grease on it’s spindle had hardened and effectively glued it in place. Once stripped down, old grease removed and new grease applied, it all worked perfectly. Not the easiest of things to work on but very satisfying to keep something so nice going.

The video below shows how the solenoid releases the cam gear to engage with the flywheel gear (flywheel has been removed in this clip to better show operation)