Hello Everyone!! This is follow up to my new acquisition last week, the rather beautiful Hitachi TRK-8290!! This is the dirtiest stereo I have ever bought - So disgusting & filthy Poor thing....... Keeping a long story as short as I can: Belts turned to goo, motor seized almost solid, cassette door plastic nipple that lock door closed broken off along with sliders that you could barely move........& a few other issues!! So, a total strip down was the order of the day, all the 'works' out, speakers out cassette deck out - goo really horrible on this one too taking a good 2 hours to remove & get everything gleaming & all the rubber bits cleaned back to black!! Powering up the guts while still on the table, the cassette deck played with amazing clarity through my headphones, speed was way too slow but as the bearing oil worked it's way into the motor bearing it corrected itself pretty quickly needing only a slight tweak to reach perfection All the auto stop functions worked perfectly in all modes as did the music search system! This was left playing while I carried on........... So far so good!! Next stop, a full very soapy sink full of water, I don't have a bath here just a wet room so needs must - The pictures tell some of this story but not all, it was just so dirty........ After a drip dry & good drying off, back went the now clean woofers & tweeters & the wiring run back in it's original place & the inside of the tuning dial polished up along with the beautiful silver dial itself!! The tape holder & door were next: I noticed there was an almost perfect circle where the plastic nipple had once been - now I am not too good at problem solving with this type of scenario First, I gently filed the circle flat after marking where it once was - then I used a tiny screw & filed the head completely flat - a generous helping of superglue in & on the screw head then carefully placing the head on the prepared roughened up surface on the door itself............next day I used a tiny piece of heat shrink rubber, applied the soldering iron to just make it grip the thread of the tiny screw & then a blob of glue to seal the end & strengthen the whole thing, making a 'Damper Type' post for the steel mechanism to grip when door closed!! Amazingly it worked spot on Never expected it to at all Final task: reassemble the whole caboodle & this is not always easy with these things as I remember as a teenager, you need four hands Finally managed it & it was time to test it out......... What can I say? This beast is now fully restored & fully functional Perfection & while these won't blow you away bass wise, they are still very nice indeed!! Uploading a few images, however the complete hi-res set is here: https://onedrive.live.com/?id=BEA218B70F2B18D1!24645&cid=BEA218B70F2B18D1
amazing job. It looks very clean and shiny I looked for a Hitachi TRK-W2 (has a detachable walkman) for more than a year, Finally i found one about a month ago. Yesterday evening i opened it to change the belt. It was extremely dirty inside. and the movement compartment looked exactly like what I see from your picture. I am hoping to place the parts back together. unlike regular boomboxes where the back cover come out first on this one the main component is attached the back and front cover comes out first and this makes it very difficult to place the microphone and earphone jacks in place when i want to place the front cover .
Yeah they are hard to do buddy but be patient, clean slowly till you are happy & take your time to reassemble Post images I would love to see it
I was able to replace the belts. The main cassette parts are fine and play cassettes beautifully. The detachable walkman is dead. I will post more specific pictures next week. I hope to get some advice of how to place this front cover back. The headphone and microphone connectors should be placed first and then try to put the front cover but the problem is nothing keep these headphone/ microphone jacks in place while am trying to place the cover (cause these connectors move from original spot). (I work this weekend and will post more pictures about the specific issues next week)
