Has anyone ever serviced or taken apart a 4 knob 1967 factory 8-track player? I want to see if the one I got will work. What do I need to test and look for?
I also have one of the '67 8-track players and would like to test it and try to get it to work. I have seen service manuals for the '67 Buick 8-track player on eBay and have considered buying one. One recently sold ($15) but maybe the sell has more copies of it available. Might be worth sending a message to ask. http://www.ebay.com/itm/1967-BUICK-...D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557
Thanks for the tip, I'll do just that. I had the thing apart and got some parts freed up, the solenoid to the track changer was stuck, as was the track wheel. Now the springs and the drives snap back like they should. The motor turns all right, and the belts are still there, the electronics don't look too bad; wires are reasonably clean and pliable, contacts are fairly clean and the solid state stuff looks clean and not burnt or broken. There was only crud and corrosion in the door and the tape area, looks like some rodents attempted to move in. So it might run...any tips on how to clean up the head?
There is an ebay member (Themrgrandprix) that services these very reasonable. He has replacement parts and is very knowledgeable with calibration and tuning. He took my old unit and used it as a core with no hidden cost of his initial estmate.
Marc when you figure out how to get Themrgrandprix info on E-bay can you give me a heads up ? Thanks.
There is a newer member working on 8 track too, j69shep. He posted here with some 8 tracks. http://www.v8buick.com/showthread.p...tune-up-and-adjustments&p=2560823#post2560823
Here's the bitch with old 8-tracks........every single one of them will come apart with the track change sooner or later. That metal strip that makes the solenoid change tracks is stuck to both ends of the tape to make the loop. The glue or the oxide on the tape dries and at some point in time you hit that spot and the tape comes apart. I can't count the number of tapes that i have popped opened and fixed.....used to buy new metal strips from Radio Shack. My units in the 70's were Craig PowerPlay and Pioneer Super Tuner.....first unit was a Lear 4-track. I even had a 8-track recorder at home and would burn Dead bootleg reel to reels on to 8-tracks.....my 'Cat had the coolest tunes at the drive-in ! Peace WildBill
last week, I fixed about a dozen 8 track tapes to add new channel change strips & pads. Some tapes had come apart, others were just old.
Wow...That whole thread is great info, the AM/FM receiver in my Electra has to come out and get serviced anyway, so I'll be following Jason's tips. About 20 years ago I refurbished a 2 knob 8-track from about 1969 in a similar fashion to what Jason was doing but not as involved. That player is still working and will go into the Electra when I get this other one done for the "Cat. It was easier than this 4 knob player is. The only thing is I'm told that the 4 knob players were some of the best 8 track players ever built. I also have 300 plus 8 track cassettes too; - and yeah, they probably all need the foam pads and the foil strips replaced. I guess that's what happens to stuff that was never supposed to last more than about 5 years some 40 odd years later. What is a good contact cleaner? WD-40 sort of works, but I don't like the greasy feel of it. It loosened a lot of crap up, but now it really needs to be "cleaned".
TOP-DOWN-FEVER sells service manuals on Ebay. You can pretty well count on replacing the foil tape as preventative maintenance. I have some tapes where the foam behind the tape that tensions it against the head gets crunchy and/or the felt pads on the tensioner come off. I replace them with low density weather striping I get t Home Depot. The biggest electronic problem you'll have is dried-out capacitors.
I've taken apart a few and in about 7 out of 10 the motor is bad as the speed adjust which is internal to the motor no longer holds adjustment. Meaning it will play fine and then slow then go super fast and not necessarily in that order. I have schematics and service manuals for the 67 player which is pretty much the same for all BOP's and chevy. I have a few good motors and I have the belts. The older players are pretty difficult to work on electronically because there are 3 different circuit board and lots of interconnecting wire to track down. They sound pretty good once its adjusted correctly. The best way to test it is with a 12-15V dc 5-6 amp power supply. You need the high current version or the track changer won't actuate. It needs a lot of juice to get it to move. you'll need two speakers and a tape. Before you start make sure the belts are somewhat intact. Hook up the speaker leads and 12V to the main power and ground. Plug in the tape and the motor should spin up and you might even hear some sound. If the motor doesn't spin up start there. Worse case send it to me and I'll get it going.
Cool! :TU: Thanks very much for the advice, I'll try and power it up the way you describe. I've got a couple of old model railroad transformers around here that might have enough amperage, not sure I want to try with a battery charger like the last time I tested one 20 years ago. The belts are "there" but there isn't much tension on them. They've been in one position for a very long time. The motor area looks nice and clean, and I just got the track changer unstuck and loosened up. Solenoids look "serviceable', and the head had some corrosion on it. None of the plastic parts and rollers are in bad or crystallized shape, they look pretty good. I'll let you know what happens, probably this weekend. I might have a couple of old Delco 10 ohm speakers around, is it important that they run the proper ones even in a test? Be careful what you wish for, you might end up getting this thing! :laugh:
You could try this site. I've no connection to it, never even owned an 8 Track. They never really took off in Australia. http://8trackheaven.com/ Cheers, Chris
That's probably going to be the next step. I'll select a few of the 300 or so 8 tracks I have and get them refurbished. All I want is a machine that will play a tape for a few minutes at a car show, just to demonstrate that it can still be done. Besides, I'm driving convertibles, you can't hear a thing in them at the best of times anyway. I'm not the type to play things so loud as to entertain the whole neighborhood as I drive by. The car has the stock, crappy, but refurbished 10 amp speakers in it anyway, so sound fidelity is more or less out of the question. I had thought about finding a stereo splitter for the FM units, but why? Who can hear anything roaring down a hiway with the top down at 70 anyway? That's why an iPod with earbuds makes sense. The other thing I did about 10 years ago was play CDs over the 8 track player. I had an 8-track to cassette converter, and then stuck in a cassette to CD converter and ran CDs over the player. Had to have the volume on max to hear anything, but it worked. I think what I'll end up doing is getting one of my AM/FM units modernized and have an MP3 jack installed. I haven't been able to find a new cigarette lighter operated MP3 player to antenna unit that allows my iPod to play over the radio in a few years.
We never had one, I think I can still remember the ad out of an old Playboy... It's been a while; when I was growing up my parents when from reel to reel directly into cassettes, bypassing 8-tracks for the most part. My dad did have an 8-track with quadraphonic in a 77 Mercury, and later I had one in a 75 LeSabre. Good clear sound when they worked, invariably always used to have to jam part of a folded up cigarette pack into the right hand sides to play the tapes. Even the set that is in the Wildcat right now has a part of a #7 pack that will put enough pressure on to play it right.
