Sometimes, the juice isn't worth the squeeze.
I found a Nakajima WPT-150 on Facebook Marketplace the other day. It was an estate cleanout guy, and I aim to make friends with as many of those as I can. In addition, I'd been looking for a decent electric typewriter anyway. Maybe someday I'll just type these journal entries out instead of using Pelican.
He only wanted $20 I think, and even with a few problems it's worth that, so I went and got it. I happened to mention I would also be in the market for VCRs, tape decks, really anything other people would consider obsolete, ane he mentioned a VCR in the other room. I gave him another $20 for that, something in a box that once contained a Pansonic PV-V4020. Once I got it home, though, what was in the box was a Sears SR-3000 from somewhere in the mid to late 80's.
Now, even in perfect condition, this thing is worth about a smack in the face. It's pretty early VHS, it's fucking huge and fucking heavy and fucking ugly. I figured I'd give a shot at cleaning it up and getting it working smoothly and then convince somebody with more money than brains on eBay that it was just what they needed to add to their wood panelled man cave or she shed or whatever it is they call them.
It almost works. Tape insert mechanism is fine and smooth and while there's a bit of noise when the head spins, it's not worse than you could expect for a machine of this age. However, it won't actually play anything. After a long fight with a number of readily marked disassembly screws, I got the bottom off and found my culprit: the two belts controlling the reel mechanism were goo. Not even enough left to measure, and what was there is now just stains on my hands, my mouse pad and everything else within spitting distance of the desk.
I looked around the box for a service manual maybe but no love. I did find a few service receipts from mostly regular maintenance work and looky there, a bag of extra belts...all of which are also goo. The belt sizes are marked on the bag, so I could probably find replacements that will last at least the rest of my life, but am I going to spend hours disassembling a very tightly packed piece of 80's electronics to clean the belt leftovers just so I can get shitty quality out of a subpar player (even in its prime)? No. I'm going to put it in the trash and go back to Facebook Marketplace and find somebody who's go the Panasonic that should have been in this box or something equivalent. It sucks, but sometimes another man's trash should also be your trash.