Before I begin on this explanation I'll apologize for the lack of photos However I while return in a bit once I find the time to take some proper pictures, that being said, hope this is helpful. One thing that has always sort of bothered me with my WM-3 was that it seemed to have considerably lower pick-up spindle torque than any of the other units I own. Even after replacing the idler tire, torque was very low, though at that point I just assumed it to be a natural (albeit annoying) characteristic of the device. It didn't seem to have any problems with tapes for a while until a couple tapes I picked up were almost eaten. With that I decided to investigate as to how to try and remedy this issue First thing I looked at was idler tire and the other plastic components which made contact with it. The shaft of levers and gears on which the spindle sat seemed clean of dirt and grease which would weaken the idlers grip. However the ribbed plastic shaft under the plastic flywheel on which the belt sat was pretty dirty with old rubber, so I cleaned that. But even with it cleaned, it made almost no difference. Observing the mechanism which pushed the idler tire to the pick-up spindles components, I noticed a small torsion spring which seemed to be responsible for the action, so I decided to disassemble all the components blocking it to access the spring. 1. with a flat head screwdriver, I removed the clip from the plastic flywheel on which the belt sat, then removing the spindle itself. 2. I needed to get the auto-stop clear plastic gear with the oval on it off which required take off a spring which tensioned it to the auto-stop arm. In the process of removing this spring you need to be extremely careful. the spring is not loosely attaching the Auto-Stop arm and the pole on which the clear Auto-Stop gear resides. On this pole, there is glue holding the spring to the arm, you must use some sort of thin blade or pin to chip away the glue. Once the glue is off, you can safely remove the spring and the washers holding down the clear plastic auto-stop gear, then the gear itself. 3. Next you will have access to a the black washer and the gear it hold down, remove the black washer and the gear. (You will also notice the gear pushes tiny-gear from an adjacent pole upwards, you can remove that tiny gear too) 4. You now have a clear view of the torsion spring. You will notice the lower arm of the spring rests on the base of one of the poles. The solution to the torque problem is to move this lower arm of the torsion spring over to rest on the other pole further away, this will make it so the spring is tighter and therefore will allow the idler tire to exert more force onto the pickup spindle assembly. You may notice that this other pole that you have now repositioned the spring to does not have a groove for the spring to rest in like the other pole, this is not an issue so far as I have tested, but if your are feeling wary, you could try to lock it in place with some glue. If you do take that route, do not reassemble anything, and make sure that there is clearance for the gear which would rest on the pole. After reassembling everything, the pick-up spindle now runs with good torque and this DIY experiment has not seemed to impact the performance of the device.
