RCA VLT385 VHS - possible internal damage?
 

Generally-speaking, how worried should I be about damage/misalignment of critical moving parts if a VCR has been dropped (hard)?

Purchased a RCA VLT385; Hitachi-built, I think, c. 1985. Was shipped to me poorly packed (no cushioning) and sustained enough impact to smash a corner of the case. Powers on/ accepts cassette/ plays & stops, although motor doesn't sound healthy. Play doesn't seem to move any tape and Stop apparently just shuts off the motor, winding down slowly without braking. Haven't been able to check output or open it up yet though. Hopefully this weekend.

It's possible these were existing issues... but given the shipping debacle, I'm curious as to how susceptible the innards are.

To quote Labguy on a certain parcel carrier: "I swear, they could damage an anvil!"...Some decks are more vulnerable than others, but I don't think anything is beyond risk.

That said all problems you describe could easily stem from naturally decayed rubber parts.

Haha, yeah. Though to be fair, this one is 99% on the seller as opposed to carrier. The only thing between it and [presumably] the concrete was a thin plastic bag and 1/8" of reused corrugated.

At 18 lbs. it's a fairly substantial deck; kinda surprised it didn't sustain more outside damage from the inertia of its own weight. But if it's not a given that the real tricky stuff needs repair/realignment after such an event, I feel better about investing in some belts & rollers. Agree with your hunch that they need to be replaced anyway. Thanks!

I got my first LD player packed that way (t'was soggy too)...Had some internal damage I had to jury rig, but I did make it work.

I've seen 80's betas break from tipping over/upright (when rested on their side with a tape inside), and late 90's decks die from falling out of cars, and I've also seen decks take crazy beatings and just keep chugging along...

The best diagnosis is one made by opening it up and observing the mech in action.

Right on... I shoulda qualified that with might need to be replaced. Will definitely hold off on parts until I get a good look under the hood.

Just wondering- in your experience, are there any specific symptoms of transport damage that can't be resolved via new belts/rollers?

Jamming, loose bits of plastic or metal that obviously should not be, wheels and gears that don't want to turn.

I generally look for things on the mechanism that should be moving (tape, reels capstan, etc), but are not then try to trace what moves them till I find a bad belt or idler. I'll often manually try to move/turn those to see if it is really rubber or if anything is stuck, jammed or broken.
Sometimes things get stuck from grease turning to glue with age. Be ready to re-lube if/where needed.

Ah I see... Cool. I'm pretty much a newbie to anything beyond routine cleaning/ belt swaps. Been spoiled by inheriting well-taken-care-of decks in the past. This helps a lot, appreciate the info!

Ditto on looking for broken plastic pieces and crack PC boards.loose parts and solder joints on boards.I also check the video head with a magnifier in case any thing hit it while in transit. UPS ruin my friends $$$$ ham radio as it was shipped by the UPS store in town to the factory for a simple tune up.When they got it.It was in bad shape.

Most Hitachi decks made for RCA were quite durable, save for the belt kit. For RCA-badged Hitachis, there was one popular kit, and your VCR uses it..

Russell Industries' PRB Line has a belt kit, part number: VKT160 (consists of SCB2.5 Load Belt FRZ11.0 Capstan Belt, SCA3.2 Load belt, SCA13.6 Reel Belt and SCQ5.3 (uses 2)

and the idler is VA40 - just the tire, ST1.014

Shop around for the kit and/or the separate belts. Prices vary widely. I used to get kits from MAT Electronics, but they now only do separate belts. For the record, in 1989, the belt kit was $5.05 from RCA........I replaced dozens.......

Replacement of the belts is pretty much straightforward - and we are here to help......

"Most" except for the phototransistor start and end sensors and DC-DC converters (either the discrete components or the DC-DC converter module version depending on model) that failed left and right. Kept technicians in work. I made a lot of money fixin' those back in the day.

Saw a lot of bad end sensors (PT23, PT23L, etc) on Sharp, Toshiba and JVC decks - the display DC-DC converters on the Hitachis and VLT2XX RCA/Hitachis, bad power supply diodes on the Panny (VRXXX) RCAs, and lots of sun gears on the JVCs. This on top of heads, belts, idlers, LB1649 load motor chips, and the mode switches on the cheapo stuff (XR1000, Memorex, Realistic...).

I made about $100 a month while deployed just replacing Fisher belts and idler tires - the ship's store sold Fisher VCRs (FVHXXX) exclusively in the mid-80s, and by 1989, the rubber belts in those VCRs were tired. I bought 20 Sanyo/Fisher belt kits in October, and by Christmas I was reordering - no small feat when you are in the Eastern Mediterranean, 8 days separated by mail...."Peter Pan" with Mary Martin was my test tape......:D

Repair tips for RCA VCRs
 

Dunno if this will help anyone, but here's a consolidated list of repair tips for RCA VCRs I collected back in the day - various sources, some from RCA, most from the web.

Thanks for all the additional info, guys. Finally got under the hood; nothing looks bent/broken and head drum appears undamaged (although my magnifier isn't great). So, fingers crossed it wasn't a fatal drop.
Belts are all intact but one or two look pretty tired. Haven't run it open yet to see exactly what's slipping or stuck. That's next, though I'll likely swap belts regardless as preventive maintenance. Going rate for the PRB kit is $20... I gather I should get that and not mess with anything generic/cheaper.

That .pdf is great, will come in handy to a novice like myself. Thanks Brian.


One more general question related to this make/ model/ era, for anyone:
Even if I manage to clean & restore this thing to good-as-new factory spec, did older consumer VCRs inherently cause more wear & tear on tapes? I know playback will never match a modern JVC or Panny SVHS deck but I'm more concerned about how rough it is on the media.

With new or like-new heads, no problem. Get it gunked up, and it'll wear tapes out fast - first to go is the sharpness of the picture. Think of the old kiosk VCR-tape loops playing in Sears, JC Penney and Montgomery Wards back in the day - most looked smeared and lost color in the pix. Worn tape from 3,000+ playings. Need a head? Dunno if Asti Magnetics still has them for the older stuff, but you can try. They may have gotten stuck with a bunch... Heads were about 20 bucks back in the 90s from Asti - some even cheaper. 4-Head? $$$$...

Others to try:

MAT Electronics
ACME Electronics <- no more......gone entirely from the web.
MCM Electronics <- they've gone corporate, so who knows if any old stuff is still around. I LOVED them in the 80s.

The 2-head drum in my RCA doesn't *look* gunked up, although I cleaned it using cardpaper + 99% isopropyl and got a lot of stuff off.

Asti does have a replacment head P/N for mine but unclear if it's actually available. Gotta contact them directly I guess; will see what they say. If they have one and it's cheap enough, would be nice to play old tapes on this thing without fear of degrading them. Thanks for the hint!