Had some fun and games with the 103 last night. I have a good few wm-103's. Its one of my faves. This week I received one from France that was listed as needing a new belt. Well, when it arrived, it looked minty new. But inside was a different story all together. It looked a complete mess. The belt was goo, and as we all know, thats not a nice job. With the new belt in and the head alignment adjusted and locked, I found that one direction played fine, but the other was all over the place, with a horrendous scraping noise. So, I started to dig around, and this was going to require me to step away from my comfort zone (new belts and alignment with a clean) and get into some trial and error disassembly. First to come out was the offending capstan flywheel. I had identified this as the cause. Glad I did, because it was also in a bit of a mess. Using the flywheel from a donor unit, I still got the same results. Scraping and really poor speed stability that was perfectly in sync with the scrape noise. Then I reasoned on a simple fact that the small white washer that the flywheel rests on was probably not helping matters much. As a test, I thought I would double up on the washer count, again, using one from the donor. Both cleaned and a pin prick of sewing machine oil and everything reassembled. The result? No scrape, and almost silent playback, in both directions with the stability I was after Video So, I have a few other models that probably need opening up and seeing if an extra washer may improve issues which could be described as similar. Question is.... where can these tiny washers be purchased from? I also need a supply of the capstan retaining washer. Anyone know the spec for these? Thickness External Diameter Internal Diameter Thanks in advance
