Just picked up a Panasonic PV-1730 Hi-Fi VCR

[vortalexfan]

Originally Posted by Ed in Tx

That would be HR-S8000U...The one with the crappy switching mode power supply burns up in, melts the insulator sheet! Did not like it when I got assigned one to work on, at all! And no, not direct drive reels in that either.

Ok, I thought it did have them (I had opened it up only once when I had it and I saw several motors under there but didn't realize it wasn't direct drive all around).
Sorry for the confusion.
The unit I have now which I think is the sister to the wood-grained S-VHS unit I was talking about is the HR-D630U Hi-Fi VHS VCR from 1987.

[djski]

It's very rare for mode switch to jump time on its own.. Can you post a picture of the mode switch? I would suspect the switch could be dirty instead and may need to be cleaned. Usually to check its alignment, machine has to be put into sub-load if its the type I am thinking of. There's either a dot or a notch on it for indexing but again a picture is worth 1000 words.

[vortalexfan]

Originally Posted by djski

It's very rare for mode switch to jump time on its own.. Can you post a picture of the mode switch? I would suspect the switch could be dirty instead and may need to be cleaned. Usually to check its alignment, machine has to be put into sub-load if its the type I am thinking of. There's either a dot or a notch on it for indexing but again a picture is worth 1000 words.

Well I did say (or I thought I did anyways) that I took the mode switch out of the VCR to check it out when I was trying to troubleshoot the VCR initially and when I did that I turned the switch back and forth to figure out if it was still rotating properly or not, and I forgot to put the switch back into its original keyed position.

I'll get a picture of the mechanism including the mode switch and post it and see what you think.

[djski]

Originally Posted by vortalexfan

Well I did say (or I thought I did anyways) that I took the mode switch out of the VCR to check it out when I was trying to troubleshoot the VCR initially and when I did that I turned the switch back and forth to figure out if it was still rotating properly or not, and I forgot to put the switch back into its original keyed position.

I'll get a picture of the mechanism including the mode switch and post it and see what you think.

Is the switch below or up top by the cassette tray?

[vortalexfan]

Originally Posted by djski

Is the switch below or up top by the cassette tray?

It's below the cassette tray, it's a little round assembly that has some square shaped protrusions out the side that the retaining screws go through, the electrical connector goes through the top.

[vortalexfan]

Greetings everyone, a little update on this VCR, I was going through the Power Supply circuitry and I found several bad capacitors in the 5V and 12V rail of the power supply circuit and 3 of the capacitors (2 2200 µF 16V capacitors and a 330 µF 16V capacitor) are capacitors that I don't have the exact values in, I have 2200 µF and 330µF capacitors but they're 10V units rather than 16V units, if they are only a few microfarads low (within 10%) would it be ok to use them in the circuit?

I think otherwise this unit is fixed now.

[old_tv_nut]

Can't help with your specific trouble list, but I see no one answered your question about capacitor voltage rating.

It is NOT OK to use a lower voltage rated capacitor as a replacement.
A higher rating is OK within reason, but it may be bigger and not fit anyway.

[vortalexfan]

Another update on this VCR, Its now having problems with the mode switch, and I can't seem to find the mode switch this VCR uses as a NOS part anywhere online (not ebay, or any Electronics Parts suppliers.)

I was wondering if there were any other models of Panasonic or Quasar VCRs from the early to mid 1980s that used the same type of mode switch as the PV-1730 did?
If so which models were they so I could possibly look out for those models as parts units on ebay or locally on facebook marketplace.

I think right now the mode switch is all that's wrong with the unit, because I was able to sucessfully repair the power supply issue mentioned previously (I found capacitors in my stash that were the correct voltage) and it started up and loaded and played and FF and Rew like it was supposed to for about a day but then after I had unplugged it to put it back together and put it away, I went to try it out the next day and then it started acting up again.
This time I think it was the mode switch because when I tried to clean the mode switch I think I might of damaged it and not realized it, and so it worked a little bit but then it failed for good.

[redk9258]

Clean the mode switch. Look up Norcal715 and 12voltvids on YouTube. They show how to do it many times.

[vortalexfan]

Originally Posted by redk9258

Clean the mode switch. Look up Norcal715 and 12voltvids on YouTube. They show how to do it many times.

I did clean the mode switch already, and that's unfortunately how I broke the original mode switch...