Recently I aquired a Beocord 8000. When I tried to play a tape the would moved then drop back. Found out the belts had stretched. Just fitted a new set and replaced the small glass 250ma fuse on the main PCB. Now I have another problem. When I press play nothing happens, unless I hold the cassette tape down slightly. It is as if it is sitting too high when in place. at a guess I would say it is ony 1-2mm out. When I hold it down it will play perfectly and sounds great. It will also rewind ok, but will not fast forward. If I remove the cassette and hold down the tray it sits on. Fast forward works perfectly, I think the two problems may be related.

 

 

Craig

Hi Craig

I haven't got a BC8000, but if it's anything like the 9000, I would check the limit switches first.  There is a cassette eject limit and a cassette detect limit that you might look at.  If they are set on the borderline, pushing the tray might be just getting these limits to work.  Should be fairly easy to adjust if that is the problem.

Regards

Geoff

Thanks Geoff, I will take a look in the 9000 srvice manual. As the 8000 is not on the site.

 

Craig

 

 

Craig - this sounds a bit like some of the probs I had with a BC8004. Martin fixed mine and may be able to suggest something you could try yourself, as from what I understand some of these problems can have multiple causes. 

There is a switch with a little black pin, comming through the cassette-holder. This detects the presence of a cassette. For checking and repair you better open the cabinet. Only loosen the two screws at the back and flip the top cover. There should be a metal stick to make the cover stay open (like you might know from your car). The switch is near the tape-heads. But I don't remember, weather it should be open or close with a cassette inside.

There's no stick in these machines but flip up to vertical and pull a couple of cm's away from the bottom part and it will stand by itself. 

Martin

Well for some strange reason the problem seems to have fixed itself. Tried playing a cassette today and it works perfectly, so does fast forward. have to wait and see what happens tomorrow. Now on to my next problem. Thought I would try recording a tape. When I try to record the VU metres light all the way up unless the recording level is set to almost zero. When I play back the recording it is very distorted. Could this be due to bad caps? My reason for saying this is I had a similar problem with a Beocord 2000, although that was on playback.

 

Craig

 

Well another problem fixed and another one found. Looks as though the recording problem is down to the Amp I was using. It won't record from the Radio but using the Aux is fine. Managed to make a perfect recording the Afternoon. Now my latest and hopefully last problem is it seems to struggle when trying to fast forward. It starts off very slowly and gets slower until it comes to a complete stop. Tried taking a llok inside but could not see much. One thing I did notice is if I take the 3 screws out that hold the cassette mechanism in place. So it is out of the main unit, and turn it on its side. Sometimes it will work OK, but still not every time.

 

 

Craig

Hi Craig

Problems with the fast forward are fairly common and I've recently fixed a few myself, however, not specifically on the BC8000.  Fast forward is initially OK while the take up reel is small but everything slows down  as it accumulates more tape.  These seem to be your symptoms as far as I can tell.  There are two areas that you might like to look at.  First is the action of the clutch - can you adjust it to put a bit more pressure on the spring or can you get hold of a better clutch unit.  I think that you can still get them as spares but they were a bit pricy.  The second area is the small jockey wheel that completes the drive - sometimes it needs lubricating so that the spring can pull it properly into place and apply the right amount of pressure. 

Have a look at both of those points, you might get lucky

Regards

Geoff