[qsilver]

This was my grandparents VCR and my Grandfather still enjoys playing some old VHS's but its stopped being able to track.

Usually you would get some white dots shaped a little like comets flying across the screen but if I adjusted the tracking on the front panel, I could get rid of them.

I tried this today and it only made it worse so I decided to take a look. I have some background in electronics and audio tape so I thought I would take a cautious look.

I was surprised to see what looks to be a switching power supply - this thing has been switched on near its entire life so I'm surprised its still running!

I cleaned the tape path, heads and capstan which did all seem to have a film of dirt and then put it back together for a test and now I get a perfect picture but another problem appeared.

Now the capstan struggles to engage at play. I tracked this down to a slipping cracked belt on the loading motor so I'm looking for a belt kit to replace this with.

The final thing I found was the backup battery starting to leak. I've removed it for now but I'm not sure what to replace it with. It's marked "Varta 2/170 DK". I've seen some similar batteries for Videostars on the internet but I'm not sure on the voltage of this one and thought someone here might know what the voltage is.

Hopefully I can get this working reliably again soon!