Help for my Sony TC-277-4

I now own all of my dad's old stereo gear. Last night I decided to try out his little Sony RTR.

Mounted up a tape, turned it to Play and music came through it's wires for the first time in 30+ years.

Moments after it began, tape started piling up on the cabinet due to the take up reel not turning. I stopped the deck and manually wound up the pile, started it again and manually I could keep turning the take up reel for a bit. Everything else seems fine.

I dug into the owners manual which has nice directions for removing the cover, but that's about it. No diagrams of parts or anything, other than three places to add lubrication. I don't have the service manual, and Hifiengine.com has nothing for this model.

So I boldly removed the cover and played with it for an hour but couldn't see how the take up reel is supposed to be driven.

Searching the forums tonight I found this recent thread about a similar model: http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=653236. The first photo showing the innards looks awfully similar to mine, but some parts are in different positions. I also see on the photo the take up reel has a belt which mine seems to be missing, the belt on the take up reel going to the center shaft of the heavy flywheel thing. (Is that the capstan?)

Mine does have a belt going from the motor spindle to a wheel which touches the left reel during Rewind, and another saggy belt from the left reel to the tape counter, and that's it.

Assuming a belt is the first step to getting underway, where can I obtain one and how do I know what size it needs?

Thanks a bunch.

I have a couple of tc 377's and I was able to get new belts on ebay for less than $20.00

That design may use an idler wheel that engages when the machine is in forward play. With the cover off, observe operation of the linkages when in play, FF, REW, etc. If there is no big o-ring running from the capstan area to the forward spindle (as on the 366 and 377), they must be using a rubber wheel to drive the forward spindle. It may not be moving into position because of stiff grease, or it is perhaps not gaining traction on the spindle. Once you understand the mechanical operations better, you know what to pay attention to. Belt kits are available, as was mentioned, on the Bay (if needed.)

I'm pretty sure the TC-277-4 quad deck uses the same transport mechanism as the TC-353D stereo deck. If you go to hifiengine and check out the manual for the TC-353D you'll probably find that it applies to your machine's mechanical section as well.

If it's the same then there is no take up reel drive belt used in that mechanism, it uses an idler wheel driven by the motor pulley which rides against the bottom section of the take up reel table. As mentioned above the grease has probably hardened up on the pivot for the arm that allows the idler wheel to move in and out.

Be very careful when cleaning up and relubricating the mechanism that you don't get any oil or grease on the big flywheel or any of the idler wheels / belts / pulley surfaces. If anything gets on those surfaces clean them off thoroughly with rubbing alcohol.

Sure enough, eBay has a plethora of sellers offering belt kits. One even includes a CD of service manuals. That's my next step.

Thanks for all the input so far. I'll post back as I get further into troubleshooting. Might take me a while as I've got about a dozen projects in the air at any given time.

Again I'm pretty sure yours is going to be like this TC-280D (same as the TC-353D) inside. The large belt only takes care of the rewind function in this model, the small belt is for the tape counter. If the inside of yours looks like the one below you really need to take a look at the idler wheel that rides between the motor pulley and the take up reel, it's probably just stuck and needs to be cleaned and re-lubed to get the take up reel table working again.

Can you verify if yours looks like this one when you take the front cover off? If so the take up reel is driven by the small idler tire on the right, it must swing in and out freely when you move the function lever.

Yes, that looks very much like what I've got. This is the only pic I took for reference while I had it open.

From what I recall playing with it last week, the right-side idler tire didn't have enough travel to position itself to touch the take up spindle.

All of the articulating mechanisms were rather stiff, and there's a fair amount of dried up orange grease on a lot of the flat surfaces, against what some of the push rods seem to scrape. I'll try and clean that stuff out next time I'm in there.

The manual shows lubrication points with arrows pointing at the centers of the two idler tires and the pinch roller I believe. But they have plastic caps over their centers. Do I need to remove the plastic caps somehow, or just try and drip some oil at the edge of the cap and hope it works itself in?

Thanks a bunch.

sony

I had one of these on the bench last week. These suffer from the old grease becoming stiff. Remove the old grease. I use wd40 and cotton swaps to help dissolve the old stuff and remove it. Be very careful and use small amounts. Don't get it on the rubber or electronics. I use white lithium to regrease. The plastic caps should be removed to grease/oil the rollers. Once again very small amounts keep it off the rubber. Move the transport and speed knobs a few times and watch them flip back and forth as they should. While I had the deck open clean the captain surface and the rubber rollers with swabs and (I use 97 isopropyl alcohol). See if this works for you. Let us know.

I'm back. I bought the manual and found the culprit.

The takeup idler was making contact with the takeup reel, but not touching the motor pulley. Only when looking at the diagram did I realize the takeup idler arm assembly was not a single L-shaped piece of metal, but a two-piece articulating arm. The joint at the elbow was frozen.

With a lot of effort I can move the joint and see now how the takeup idler is supposed to be positioned. So, do I simply clean the joint with alcohol then hit it with lithium grease until it's loose?

Thanks a bunch.

Thanks for this thread. The last post coincided with the last thing wrong with the mechanism on the deck I fixed today. I love ak!

I used wd40 to loosen all the joints and then air tool oil after it. I then used papertowel and makeup qtips and alcohol to clean all the rubber and the heads and all nonmoving areas where lube oversprayed. I cleaned the heads over and over until the qtip came back clean. I willprobably go back and do a more thorough lubing ov thr motor and the capstan flywheel.