Pye 2272 Cassette Player

[Keithstv]

If you're going to Golborne in April I could bring the motor I removed from the 2272 I scrapped. You're welcome to have it.

Keith

[Nowhere-Man]

Thanks a lot. I'll have a go at testing the motor again just to be sure. Can't think why it should be totally dead but maybe it happened early on which is why the player looks new inside. I'll PM you if I get stuck and thanks again.

Last night I noticed the so-called tyre on my pulley is really too worn to be of any use. I can see now it appears to be a friction drive so the worn tyre explains why there is so much wow and flutter. It may be really hard to get a spare pulley with tyre of the exact same size so I'm now thinking about making a tyre. Maybe using an O ring. I'm open to ideas, of course.

This has been quite educational. I never realised car cassette players were so cleverly designed with so many moving parts.

[Nowhere-Man]

Been racking my brains over this project. The eject mechanism had me bogged down. When you push in the cassette this activates and closes a switch as the tape slides forwards. The tape is then supposed to lower down and clamp firm into the play mode. All of this is meant to come about via the motor that cog drives a couple of pulleys and finally locks due to a catch. What I find is if I do this manually, sometimes it doesn't work as the cogs tend to jam. I don't quite like the look of the tensioner spring and also the large amount of play between some of the pulleys.

The transistor may also be faulty.

Friction drive is very poor due to wear of the rubber tyres. I'm going to try and make a new tyre for the pulley using an O ring and may also have to see if all the play and the springs are correct.

I think this player must have really had some use in its life and I'm going to have to be bold and take more of it apart.

[Mark Hennessy]

With machines like these, it's usually best to treat the mechanics and electronics separately. The transistor deals with the auto-stop mode, and is monitoring spool rotation via a switch that opens and closes. Even with the mechanics not working correctly, you can usually manually turn the spool and confirm that the motor runs. When you stop rotating the spool, the motor should stop within a second or two...

With that sorted, then you can get back to the mechanics.

[Keithstv]

If you can wait 'til Golborne bring it along and I'll try to remember how it works.

Keith

[Nowhere-Man]

I can now see the idea behind the plastic cogs. Pushing the cassette forwards activates the switch. If you then push the cassette downwards this brings that friction pulley into contact with its driver pulley. Turning the plastic cog slowly by hand against spring pressure will finally result in a clicking noise and the cassette locks in. To unlock, you need to rotate again in the same direction just a bit and the lock snaps out and the cassette is free. The spring seems a bit clumsy to me.

How that plays out with regard to the motor I'm not yet sure. The motor is supposed to do the same thing as I did with my fingers but I can see the drive isn't very good at all. A bit of play and wear in the teeth seems to be one obstacle. The motor cog only just meshes with the other cog and also I'll be forced to re-tyre one of the pulleys.

The transistor PN junctions also seemed suspect.

Plenty of work to do yet.

The player that has the non-working motor is in far better condition and I imagine a new motor will be as far as I'll need to go in that case.

[Nowhere-Man]

Today I had a good go at "re-treading" the worn pulley. It took a few attempts to find a suitable tread. Finally got some special rubber from a local factory as well as strange looks for going to so much trouble over an old car cassette player.

Method was to use superglue and somehow squeeze the rubber into the groove and let it set (with my fingers stuck too).

Here is the result. Not perfect but hopefully more tread now but won't know how well it works till I refit.

[Refugee]

I am afraid that the photo does not show anything obvious to me as the focus is not all that good.
Have a fiddle with the camera and see if you can find out how to get it to do a close up.

[Mark Hennessy]

Does the camera have a "macro" mode? The icon for macro is usually a small flower. Most cameras have the mode, but it might be buried away in a menu rather than on a button...

HLH,

Mark

[Nowhere-Man]

Not sure yet. Basically images are too big for the available size on the website so the last pic I dragged smaller on Word.

Not to worry.

I can see my tyre, for some reason, loses thickness around a part of the radius which is odd and would indicate the pulley itself is now a touch distorted. However, it's now probably better than it was before with worn, hardened rubber (that finally snapped in half). I'll test the new tyre today and am expecting a bit of improvement. Can't see it being easy to get a new tyre of the exact size without paying through the nose so I just made one myself. Of course, if it was a very expensive reel recorder it pays to invest in the proper parts but I figure my car cassette just needs some TLC and budget upgrade of parts where possible.

I'll let you all know as it develops. As I said before I think someone has really had a good innings out of this player before it packed in due to sheer age and use.