1981 RCA VFT-650 has me stumped

[TUD1]

Speaking of broken VCR's, I've had this VCR for almost a year now, and I still have not located the source of the goofy problem it's having. It's stuck in stop mode. Every time you turn it on, the tape transport motor goes crazy trying to bring the tape guide posts back to the ready position, and since it does that, the tape basket will not mechanically latch. It you take the bottom off and manually spin the tape transport wheel, the lid will latch, but as soon as you turn it on, it just goes back to stop mode. It's like it doesn't know when to stop trying to stop. I have gotten it into play mode, twice. I took the belt off the motor that drives the transport, pressed play, the motor started going to opposite way, and then shortly after that, it went back into stop mode. The VFT650 is in my opinion, one of the coolest top loading VHS machines made. And I didn't even know this, but my VFT650 has 4 video heads. I counted.