Riddled TV Repair Forum

fortress · Joined: 03 Jul 2008 Posts: 3 Location: Ocala, Florida

I have an old VHS video tape that I have been trying to copy over to a DVD disk. The tape is seven years old and run time is two hours. After about 20 minutes the tape stops. I tried the tape on three separate tape players and it does the same thing. I tried to fast forward and fast reverse, that didn't help. While viewing the tape it appears to start to drag evidence of horizontal lines at times. When tape is operating normally the picture is excellent.

Can I save the tape?

Frank

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bikermack · Joined: 29 May 2009 Posts: 23 Location: Crewe

Well I know this is an old post & you've probably either sorted it or given up by now but for anyone else with this problem I have a fix that usually works (I mess with VCR tapes a lot as I use them for 24hr cctv recording and wear them out lots).

Basically whenever I have problems with random stopping/jamming/chewing up it's always been something catching inside & what I do now is to dismantle another old tape, cut the tape off the spools remove all the brake mechanism parts, using a bench grinder take all the brake teeth off the spools (making sure not to reduce the spools size too much) and then when everything's cleaned up, to transfer the tape I want from it's spools to the modified ones I generally cut off & replace one spool at a time, assemble the tape then rewind or ffwd the tape onto the smooth spool before cutting & swapping the second one & finally reassembling the "gutted" tape.

I find that with the spools smoothed off & brake mechanism removed the tapes then last considerably better with less stretch & no funny noises, random stopping etc.