Betamax SL-HF900 ejection problem
 

I just bought a SL-HF900 Betamax over Ebay for a pretty good price. I've tested the machine (using a copy of Star Trek IV) and the machine plays, rewinds, fast-forward's and does everything else perfectly. But when I went to eject the tape, instead of bringing it straight out, when you are looking at the front head on, it'll start pushing the right side out, but the left will get stuck. Once I got the tape out (had to cut it, but that was the reason I bought the tape---I've got the movie on VHS, DVD & Blu-Ray) I was able to see the operations and trigger the whole loading-ejecting cycle by hand. It appears that when the tray get ups to push the tape out, it's not lining up on the left side the first time, so when the machine senses it, the machine realign's itself and gets the tray back into the proper position and works fine the second time. (Almost like when you close a drawer and the first time only one side starts to go in and then you have to pull out the drawer again and realign the drawer to get it in.). Of course by then it's pushed the cassette into the wrong position by then.

To me it looks like it's a small mis-alignment that occurred during shipping, or else it hasn't been greased in 30 years and it's sticking.

Anyone else have this problem before?

if Sonys Betas are anything like its VHS decks they are not fun to work on at all.

if you need to get it fixed professoianlly - http://www.mrbetamax.com/

Well I'm going to take it to a professional in my town to see if he can get it working (he's been fixing TV's, VCR's and other electronics for about 25-30 years now and he's an authorized Sony repair shop) before paying shipping to the US.

This is the likely issue: http://www.mrbetamax.com/FLAssyRepair.htm