hi, ive just got hold of a hitachi trk 5280, ive replaced the drive belts, lube'd the switches and cleaned it up. it all works 100%... well i think it does... my question is this,does anyone know if the vu should move when in tape mode ? or should it just indicate the power is on ? when set to radio it moves to indicate the tune level and the same in rec, but in tape mode all it does is sit in batt full and doesnt move... is this normal ?

Welcome to S2G fulie!

I don't know about your particular model but most boxes have a switch for changing the VU's from Tune/Batt mode to level mode. Look at all of your switches to see if any of them double as the VU switch.