Scored one of these Hitachi's, pretty beat up and listed as dead. Tested it on batteries and it fired up nicely, then found a blown fuse when I opened her up, so once thats replaced the radio and line-in should be 100% on AC power. Considering I paid 20bux for it, I'm quite pleased already.

I rebelted it as the ones inside had degenerated into chewing gum and thought it might get going, but alas nothing. I read on here in one of the scant few other threads about this model that it's power assist tape mech could get tetchy and from the layout inside it doesn't look particularly straight forward.

Does anyone have any experience fixing these or should it go in the too-hard basket pile to take to a professional shop?

As it stands theres no deck action/lights whatsoever from tape/off mode and the motor doesn't engage one iota from playing around a bit inside. However it was filthy and I've not contact cleaned anything besides the volume dial so far.

It's really a bonus that it's going at all, but I'd reallly love the deck to work as this unit sounds so very fine and having that DRPS digital track counter display lit up in all her glory would be rather special indeed.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.



Rock On.

Hi!
If I were you, I would check out the switches that are part of the tape mechanism. There is one to look for whch is meant to power up the mechanism when any of the buttons are pressed and this could be the culprit. It may be worth "contact-cleaning" these switches.
With regards,
Simon

Thanks very much for the reply Simon Mackay! Your original posts on this model have been my main source of information.

Are these switches in the assembly inside the button's housing, inside the green circled area below?



Or somewhere else? Any help would be awesome. The tape mech's really crammed in, especially round the back and I'm not to keen on disassembling more than I have to.

Thanks again for your reply. Much appreciated.



Rock On.

I think I found the switch you mentioned. This one:



I did clean it and took most of the tape mech apart and cleaned all the accumulated crud out of it.

Since cleaning I can now see a definite little spark in that switch when buttons are depressed so the wiring is ok, but there still nothing from the motor.

I connected a motor roughly to the points on the board that the original motor connects to and engaged a button and low and behold it spun up.

So I'd say I need a motor for it, or an equivalent, as pictured below:



Will any 13.5v motor do? Or am I way off the mark here?


I'll post this over in the Parts Needed forum too.

Thanks very much for your help Simon Mackay!



Rock On.

I would try to identify any microswitch that is actuated if any of the white switches you highlight is pressed. One of them could be to do with applying power to the mechanism.
In this test, ignore the two solenoids below the white buttons. They are to do with the DRPS music search functionality and "pull in" the fast-wind keys if you press the FF or REW buttons associated with the music-search function.