Hello everyone, I've been working on this WM-R202 for a while, had some rust next to the pinchrollers, none of the switches made contact, belt completely turned to goo and the buttons felt sticky when pressing. Almost everything is working fine now except the playing mechanism, the bigger orange gear (first pic) is not moving far enough to make contact with the big gears so the capstans don't move. I've looked at my other WM-R202 and the button mechanism itself is moving correctly, it's the arm (2nd pic) that's not moving properly. I've tried cleaning with 99% IPA and using sewing machine oil but this didn't help a lot. Any idea's how to free the arm or could it be something else?
Update from my end: Arm moves freely now with some more IPA and oil, tested it with the power on but found out the mechanism that's responsible for the direction or playback has an issue. Somehow when the play button is pressed, the mechanism moves in place but the small part that should move the arm with the orange gear in place just doesn't move far enough.
Could it be possible because the mechanism was stuck and someone used too much force, one or both of the 'fingers' are bent?
Seems like the left one is bent a lot, didn't even see that myself! When I was looking at the mechanism the round part in de middle at the edge of the red circle seemed to not move far enough. I've also found out the green arm that holds the directional gear does not move completely out of the way despite the solenoid kicking in. Another problem is that sometimes the play mechanism doesn't "stick" so it clicks back I'll check the bent parts on monday, see if that was indeed the problem
Finally got the time to compare both of them but didn't find anything out of the ordinary. Just the circled part in red doesn't move as far as the other one. I can move it further by hand but after pressing play and release 2-3 times it's back to where it was, not far enough. The bad one feels kind of springy when moving by hand, maybe there's a spring somewhere that's too tight?
This afternoon I got around to taking apart the direction gear and I found the cause of the problem. The direction gear has a nub, there's a small bearing supposed to be on this nub. When the gear spins (switches direction), the bearing also moves around and because it is enclosed in the cut out shape, the whole arm that connects to the orange playing gear moves into place so it touches one of the 2 main gears. Somehow this bearing fell out of there and was underneath the green arm that locks the white direction gear. I replaced the washer (just sits in place) and closed everything back up and it's working fine now. Foto's below are the gear, gear with bearing and the bearing positioned in the cut-out shape where it's supposed to move. Putting everything back was a bit finicky, I put the bearing on the nub, then held the walkman upside down and put the gear on the axle, turned the whole walkman back up and then put the spring with the green arm for the solenoid back. I hope this helps anyone in the future
