pasithea

Mwahaha! It works! I can't believe it but it actually all works! Monday night we check the electronics on the platten motor and much to my despair, found that the cables were okay and the problem was indeed in the electric motor. So... We pulled it off the machine. We took the gearbox off of it, and still, the motor wouldn't work. In fact, giving it power made it lock rigidly motionless as if it were out of phase. Following a hunch, I gave it a good solid whack against the floor. Okay, that probably sounds crazy except, it's not. Whacking metal things can magnetize and demagnetize them and the behaviour was such that it lead me to believe it was incorrectly magnetized and this cleared the problem.

Of course, it still only barely ran. It's 40 year old grease had been sitting unstirred for at least 16 years and was more like tar than lubricant, so I took the whole thing apart, stripped out all of the old grease in every bearing and the gearbox, disassembled and reassembled the gear box, cleaned and inspected every little inch of it, then repacked it with fresh modern grease and put it back together. Where before it had taken effort to turn the spindle by hand, I could now twirl the spindle and make it free-spin with a flick of my fingers. Put it back on the stand and it fired first time and works PERFECT! After the engine was done, I cleaned up and relubed the cams and pistons for the platten then put it all back together and adjusted the platten so that it lands so smooth that Marty couldn't believe it.

Hee. The rest was pretty easy. I relubed the camera drive shaft and retuned it's rollers so it tracked smoothly and then built a camera mount for the webcam while Stacey insulated the wiring connectors and neatly bound the wiring into new harnesses so it looks all clean and organized.

Anyhow, I'm thrilled! This is the best restoration job we've done! (and the most complex! :)