I posted a while ago about an SV4000 which had suddenly stopped working whe= n the power supply died
I was told to flip burgers till I could pay for a new one and then carry on= , which seemed like good advice. Except that I found a used SV4000 on ebay = for a few bucks which was described as non-working but which did in fact wo= rk fine and has continued to work for a year or so
This week, the picture started giving wavy vertical lines and flashing whit= e dots tearing away across the screen horizontally, which I take to mean t= he heads are dying.
So I put its power supply into the otherwise working original SV4000 and it= powers up fine now. Except that on insertion of a tape, for some reason (b= efore I try to play) about a foot of tape spews out into the interior of th= e unit.=20
Is this the standard idler wheel problem and does anyone know how I identif= y the idler wheel please? It doesn't look like an RCA (etc) unit where the = idler is obvious. I have the whole other unit for spares now. I do know th= at one can revive a worn idler with rubbing alcohol to get the rubber to ma= tte again for 6 months or so and that for a longer term repair, the idler t= yre can be turned around to present an unworn surface; if we are convinced= that this unit has an idler and that this problem is the idler.
Or with these symptoms, would I do better trying to move the head drum from= the older machine to the newer one and is this something which can be done= with a minimum of technical knowledge and no instrumentation?