A Long Road & Too Many Hours Spent!

[Nickeccles]

Hello Everyone!!

This is follow up to my new acquisition last week, the rather beautiful Hitachi TRK-8290!!

This is the dirtiest stereo I have ever bought - So disgusting & filthy

Poor thing.......

Keeping a long story as short as I can: Belts turned to goo, motor seized almost solid, cassette door plastic nipple that lock door closed broken off along with sliders that you could barely move........& a few other issues!!

So, a total strip down was the order of the day, all the 'works' out, speakers out cassette deck out - goo really horrible on this one too

taking a good 2 hours to remove & get everything gleaming & all the rubber bits cleaned back to black!!

Powering up the guts while still on the table, the cassette deck played with amazing clarity through my headphones, speed was way too slow but as the bearing oil worked it's way into the motor bearing it corrected itself pretty quickly needing only a slight tweak to reach perfection

All the auto stop functions worked perfectly in all modes as did the music search system! This was left playing while I carried on...........

So far so good!! Next stop, a full very soapy sink full of water, I don't have a bath here just a wet room so needs must - The pictures tell some of this story but not all, it was just so dirty........

After a drip dry & good drying off, back went the now clean woofers & tweeters & the wiring run back in it's original place & the inside of the tuning dial polished up along with the beautiful silver dial itself!!

The tape holder & door were next: I noticed there was an almost perfect circle where the plastic nipple had once been - now I am not too good at problem solving with this type of scenario

First, I gently filed the circle flat after marking where it once was - then I used a tiny screw & filed the head completely flat - a generous helping of superglue in & on the screw head then carefully placing the head on the prepared roughened up surface on the door itself............next day I used a tiny piece of heat shrink rubber, applied the soldering iron to just make it grip the thread of the tiny screw & then a blob of glue to seal the end & strengthen the whole thing, making a 'Damper Type' post for the steel mechanism to grip when door closed!! Amazingly it worked spot on

Never expected it to at all

Final task: reassemble the whole caboodle & this is not always easy with these things as I remember as a teenager, you need four hands

Finally managed it & it was time to test it out.........

What can I say? This beast is now fully restored & fully functional

Perfection & while these won't blow you away bass wise, they are still very nice indeed!!

Uploading a few images, however the complete hi-res set is here:

https://onedrive.live.com/?id=BEA218B70F2B18D1!24645&cid=BEA218B70F2B18D1





https://youtu.be/W0QuQbAabYk

 

[T-STER]

Damn that turned out soo good!

I like your threads, always lots of great pics and these will be invaluable in years to come when people are trawling the web trying to locate some inside pics of their boomer to help with a fix. Cracking post as ever mate.

 

[im_alan_partridge]

You've done a great clean up there Bro

 

[MyOhMy]

EPIC! Well, that was a most enjoyable read. I especially liked the work-around-fix with the deck door, that was an ingenious solution and using the heat shrink tubing was a bit of a master stroke.

Thanks for the pictoral resto detail and well done, good result.

 

[ralrein1]

Shinie happy boombox! Very nice job there Nick.👍👍

 

[samovar]

Isn't it the spirit of this forum? You made a classic boombox happy again -- and you shared the pleasure with us

 

[Lasonic TRC-920]

Fantastic thread!

Great repair on that deck door.

Can I ask what oil you used to free the deck motor. This has been something that has made me crazy, a locked up motor.

And belt goo has to be one of the worst aspects of a clean up. Once it's on your hands, clothes, tools, it's a disaster

Great save, keep'em comin'

 

[jimmyjimmy19702010]

I use '3 in 1 - toolbox in a can'. It's a very thin oil used in anything from sewing machine workings to skateboard wheel bearings. Only a couple of drops are needed - you need to wait at least 5 minutes for the thin oil to penetrate a deck motors' bearings before you put it back into service:

 

[Nickeccles]

I use sewing machine oil, it's a fine long lasting solution & easily available

 

[baddboybill]

Awesome job and looks like new!!!

 

[goodman]

Congrats for good restoration! Boombox looks like new!