Lube Capstan of Reel-to-Reel Tape Recorder

Video Transcript

"For Expert Village, I'm Kurt, chief engineer at KGB Studios. We're continuing our series on how to restore a 4-track reel-to-reel tape machine. So, this section here, we're going to be dealing with, absolutely the lubrication of the capstan piece here which is on the top for the capstan motor. And there here with the pinch roller, this rubber pinch roller. We want things to move smoothly and easily and we're going to use this type of oil lubricant here. It's a sewing machine. You can pick it up at a sewing machine place and you'll be able to lubricate that. So let?s go ahead and proceed on how to do that. Let?s start with the capstan motor. I'm going to need a little needle nose pliers and a Phillips screwdriver. What you want to do, is you definitely want to clasp a hold of this guy here and hold it steady. Don't dig in, there's a little edge here and you want to just clasp it, grab it so that it does not move around too much. Then basically loosen it up, as you can see here, and you take that off from there and that's all that you do there. You remove the screw and that's how that works. And then we'll remove this as well. That I'll just use my finger. Push down just a little bit. I don't want to bend the arms and I don't wench it down too tight and basically take that off. Like this and that will remove these other pieces as well. There's two pieces that will remove from there. I lay that over to the side. And now we'll grab our trusty lubricant here and we're going to just dab a little bit in. Into the hole right there, into that. Be very careful that you do not get any on anything else because if you do that, you're in trouble. The same thing on here. You've got to be very careful about lubricating anything but that. So that is how you lubricate those two pieces and you do the reverse order by putting it back together. That's how you lubricate both the capstan and the pressure roller with this section. Join us again in the next section. And this again is Kurt at KGB Studios."