[DMcMahon]

Replaced the broken belt and tape transport now back working.

However on a couple of old music cassettes, fast rewind struggles/stops when the Supply spool is heavily loaded with tape, works fine on most other tapes.

Using little finger to manually rewind the bad cassettes could feel that they are much harder/stiffer to rotate than good cassettes. Even though rewind problem appears to be due to bad old cassettes decided to check out the rewind mechanics.

Cleaned all the associated idlers, pulleys etc.

It was difficult initially to see how the supply reel table was driven in fast rewind. By removing all the parts of the "Eject case assembly" was able to see that the Supply reel table is driven by an idler that in turn is driven by the top idler on the slipping clutch assembly, the bottom end of the slipping clutch assembly being driven by a drive belt that was driven by an idler pulley that is driven off the flywheel.

Wondered if the slipping clutch was slipping when the problem tapes would not rewind but with unit rotated 90 degrees on its side could see that the clutch was not slipping but the little drive belt that drives it was slipping around the drive pulley.

The belt felt a little slack so replaced with tighter belt, this improved the rewind issue (with tight cassettes) but not 100%, but happy now that issue is down to the bad cassettes themselves.

Had noticed it previoulsy, there is a strip of black foam on the inside of the bottom plastic cover, the foam makes contact with the end of the main PCB. The foam was decomposing into dust, so cleaned it off and replaced, although could not see any useful function of the foam strip.

David