Hi there - I drive a 1998 Toyota Century and it came with a "Century" branded Walkman. The Walkman sadly doesn't work, and I'm wondering if fixing it is something I could attempt! When I hit PLAY, FF or REW it does pretty much the same thing... whirrs for a while, click-click-clicks a bit, then does that same sequence once again and stops. During all this the red "BATT" light is on. Some hunting on the internet revealed this Walkman to be a rebranded Sony WM-EX622... some further hunting on the internet suggests that it is usually the belts that went wrong with Walkmans (Walkmen?) so I opened it up. Unfortunately the belt looks fine - it feels a little lose compared to belts in cars, but it certainly spins the two big brass wheels when I hit a button. I've put a video of what it's doing here. The clicking sound suggests to me that it's not belts and is instead a broken plastic cogwheel somewhere, but there was only one cogwheel I could see without removing the motherboard and it looked fine. Yet more hunting on the internet suggested that if the cogwheel was broken it was an extremely technical repair that was going to need 3D printed parts and a wealth of expertise in fixing Walkmans, none of which I have. Any ideas whether this is something I might fix, or should I just put this back in the car and get back to filling the dishwasher like I was supposed to be?
The belt is extremely loose and needs replacing. Yes really. The proper replacement from fixyouraudio, or on their ebay store, is $5.80 + shipping from Slovakia. I notice on e-bay it says 722 sold... yeah... quite a good seller. Of course there are almost certainly bad SMD capacitors, probably hence the low batt light, but that's another story...
One has to start somewhere. Velentin and Emiel are the Walkman masters with these sort of models and will advise.
@Chris Rae I watched the video, the belt is definetely too loose for proper operation. It needs to have more tension to be able to engage the head bridge into position (there are some springs to overcome). That BATT red LED indicates the device is powered on (it's NOT a battery low indicator) and it will get dimmer when the battery depletes. In regard to the gear noise, that's likely because the mecahnism is not able to properly engage into PLAY. There are EX models on which the main clutch gear cracks (see here: https://stereo2go.com/forums/threads/wm-ex-series-tac-tac-sound-repair.7108/), but yours is not one of those. Not aware of a capacitor leakeage problem on this model, so I would go with cleaning the pulleys, installing a new belt and take it from there.
@Valentin thank you very much! This is great to hear. My belt is on its way from Slovakia; I'll report back here once it arrives! Are the pulleys the brass things? Can I clean them with white spirit?
The brass things are the flywheels. You need to clean those as well as the small motor pulley and the black idler pulley. I recommend using IPA (isopropyl alcohol) or 70% (or higher concentraion) medical grade alcohol if you don't have IPA. Don't recommend using white spirit, don't know what effect that can have on the plastic pulley (there's a risk of it dissolving).
I agree on being very cautious on lubricants. I've dissolved a couple vinyl based gears. The sturdier white plastics are robust but the amber colored/transparent gears will fall to pieces if right lubricant is not used.
Just wanted to say thank you to everyone - my belt arrived yesterday, I installed it and my Walkman is working nicely!
