I've read the guide and ordered the gear (and capstan ring belt) from Marian - but could still do with some extra advice: - Can anybody recommend a suitable oil, preferably from a UK source? There are many watch oils on Ebay, but they may not all be any good. The item mentioned by Marian in his article on W&F doesn't seem to be available anymore. - Is it possible to do the centre gear change without un-soldering any wires? My soldering skills are woeful and my soldering iron is of the high street ironmonger's quality. Do I need to buy a new one of those too? Thank you
I have Moebius 8000 Swiss watch oil, which is pretty good. You have to desolder the circuit board, no way around it. What I did was snip the cables as close to the board as possible, then using a solder vacuum pen heat the leftovers and remove the scraps off the board. Then, being as careful as possible clean the wire ends and resolder when you come back after the new gear is installed. It can be done with a really crap iron but take photos on your phone of the wire positions or you really get in a mess.
Speedy - I can see how you got that nickname! Thank you. This place answers questions faster than Google. I'd seen that oil for sale so will go for that too; and I will just have to man up and get soldering. Let's hope my next question isn't about repairing a melted PCB.
It’ll be fine! Just make sure you have enough slack on the wires. The large grey playback head wire splits 3 ways, and it’s very easy to run out of wire if you make too many snips. It’s easy enough to run another wire from the head to the board, it’s just nicer if it’s the original. I found precision tweezers really useful for this
Yes but not easy, i have done it with a DC2 and DD33. The danger you face is breaking a cable in the process and then you will have to solder anyway.
From my experience, don't forget to remove the batteries when soldering. I know this is common sense, you can end up melting the battery terminals, check this thread I made about how to recover from a botched soldering job.
Ow! Those are the sort of difficulties that have put me off this job until now. I'm fairly mechanically minded but this stuff is all so small and easily damaged. Thanks for all the advice guys.
To all those who offered advice and encouragement here, thank you. I took the plunge and replaced the gear this weekend and it works. I now have an ebay purchased smooth running DD30 that is in even better nick than the original I bought as a student in 1990. I'd say it hasn't really dealt with a W&F problem but I'll put that in a new post after some more invesigations. To anybody else reading this and contemplating the repair: don't rush, put it to one side and take a break at suitable stages and keep all of those minute screws and washers carefully stuck down as you remove them. Oh, and follow Speedy's advice to get some precision tweezers - quite a revelation and invaluable.
