Victrola XI restoration

[Kamakiri]

Trying my hand at something new, a friend gave me this Victrola XI that had a broken mainspring, and needed a lot of attention.

Bought a rebuilt mainspring off eBay, and as it turned out, the secondary spring motor was gummed up solid with old grease. Not looking forward to unleashing 30 feet of spring steel coated in axle grease, I decided to take the cover off the spring, scrape as much of the old grease out as I could, and soak the crap out of the spring with carb cleaner while inside the can.

This ended up mixing with the old grease, and "reactivating" it, to a degree, as it replenished the solvents within the grease that had probably dried up around the beginning of WWII. Well, at least it unstuck, and flowed around the spring once again

Rebuilding the reproducer was 15 minutes work and the parts were $12.95 including shipping. Here is the end result.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajB5v...ature=youtu.be

These things are VERY intelligently designed, and it's easy to see why this one's working after 100 years