I decided it was time to transfer all my VHS videos to digital format. I found a great resource at digitalfaq.com – VCR Buying Guide (S-VHS, D-VHS, Professional) for restoring video. It includes a list of recommended “pro-sumer” video recorders with advanced features like TBC (Time Base Correction), which are essential for digital transfer.
After a bit of searching I managed to get Panasonic NV-HS 860 off eBay for a decent price. Unfortunately it didn’t appear to survive the journey well. After inserting a cassette the motors whirred for a second or two and then the unit powered off. Powering it on again caused the tape to eject.
After removing the lid I could see it was failing to move the tape guides to load the tape from the cassette.
Here’s a couple videos showing it in action:
On closer inspection of the mechanism noticed the tension band had lifted off the supply spindle. I replaced the tension band but it didn’t help.
I removed the mechanism for inspection and found one of the teeth from the small white loading gear, broken and sitting in grease on the adjoining metal rail. Although not good I didn’t think this would be the problem as it was from quite far round and the cog wasn’t even getting that far.
At this point I was pretty stuck, so posted some info on a couple of forums and vicboduk on vintage-radio.net came good. He posted this picture and suggested that it might be a split worm gear:
Closer inspection confirmed this as the fault:
As a quick fix I removed the gear and super-glued it. This did the trick and the VCR was able to load and play tapes properly.
The cheapest I could find a replacement for this tiny piece of plastic was £6.15 with delivery from sparedparts.com. I decided instead to try and find another Panasonic VCR which used the same Z-mechanism – that way I would get a load of spare parts in case anything else goes wrong. In the end I picked up a Panasonic NV-HD 640 for £8 including delivery and salvaged the part from there.
Now I can get round to transferring those VHS tapes.
