I recently got a rare Panasonic PV-S4280 off of Facebook marketplace. The seller said it worked fine, however, after a rough shipping process, I received the VCR in a somewhat rough shape; hairline crack on the bottom and a broken corner. Still, it turned on fine and all of the components look fine to me. Yet, when I insert a VHS tape, the film isn't grabbed and the VCR turns off after a few seconds. After a few attempts to get the VHS tape in, I managed to get the film grabbed correctly, but the same issue still persists. Along with this, the tape does not eject properly and often has to be manually removed. I'm new to working on VCRs, so I'm not sure where to go from here. The only thing that really stood out to me was the PSU was whining a bit, but that went away after a few shutdowns.
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After further testing, I was able to get the tape to read after applying a bit of pressure to the tape. However, the signal is very poor and cuts in and out constantly. After playing for a few seconds, the VCR shuts off.
Would probably start with tape path cleaning and ideally cleaning the mode switch. Issue is the mode switch often requires significant disassembly just to get access to depending on your model.
I was able to find the mode switch and clean it, however, the VCR now shuts off immediately. I ensured the mode switch was in the right position, so I'm not sure what's going on. Along with this, the loading tray is stuck in the down position.
Hmm. Could be the mechanism needs to be retimed at this point. Ideally if you can find a service manual, that will hopefully tell you how to align everything. The shutting off part is usually almost always a mode switch or other sensor. Basically if the machine can't determine where the mechanism is, or if it gets two conflicting sensor readings, it'll just shut down so as not to cause any damage to tape that might be loaded.
I was able to retime everything, and the tape was able to be inserted/ejected properly. Also, the grinding sound completely went away, and the film from the tape was getting grabbed properly. However, the video quality was still awful, and upon trying again, the grinding sound came back along with the tape refusing to eject; the tape isn't trying to eject constantly anymore, though. I thought maybe the mode switch was getting taken off course, but after a quick check, it was still perfectly aligned. To show what the video quality looks like, I attached a capture from the VCR compared to one I grabbed off of a cheap DVD/VCR combo I have.
Well done. Obviously both picture and sound fall well short. Possibly the machine needs some electrolytic capacitors replaced at least in the video and audio circuit departments.
What do you think is causing the grinding sound and the tape refusing to eject? I kind of want to tackle that before I start looking into replacing capacitors/fixing the video and audio quality.
A short video of the opened deck while loading, playing, ejecting etc may help. Having been smashed in transit it could have unusual problems as well as the usual ones.
I do not know if this applies to your VCR. However, FWIW some Panasonic VCR have a loading motor with a worm coupling on its shaft. The coupling is a type of plastic/nylon and often splits allowing it to slip on the motor shaft. This results in failure to load/unload.
Well, I came back to it after a few days and now it just shows a green screen, and the loading carriage is, somehow, more messed up. I checked the motor to see if any plastic pieces had broken or cracked, but everything looked fine. I'm not sure why/how it got worse when it hadn't been touched for a few days, but I'm kind of out of ideas at this point.
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Did a deep clean and the green screen issue is now gone. Along with that, for the first time, plugging the VCR in gave me a prompt to enter the time and date. Hopefully, the video quality issue was just that, but I'm not very hopeful. Here's another look at what the loading carriage is doing now; everything is timed correctly, btw.
After messing with the gears on the loading carriage, I managed to get it to function properly. The sensor also works properly and will cause the carriage to get in the proper position when it's blocked. However, once the carriage is down with a tape in, the unit will shut down, and the tape will be locked in. The only way to remove the tape is to manually reset the timings. What you will see in the video is exactly what the unit does when there isn't a tape inserted; it does the same thing besides returning to the eject position when a tape is inserted. Also, thanks for the help so far! I know it's probably frustrating to watch, but this is my first time working on something like this and I'm learning as I go.
