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Clean Your Own VCR
VCR Cleaning For The Do-It-Yourself Technician
This page discusses cleaning the tape path inside your VCR.
| To Clean or Not to Clean |
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| VCR cleaning is not complicated, although it should be done with a bit of caution. We will get to the cautions later. Let's first discuss when to clean and when not to clean. Cleaning will not help if your VCR just ate a tape, won't power up, doesn't rewind, won't eject... About all that a dirty tape path will affect, with few exceptions, is the picture quality. If the Video Heads get clogged badly enough to totally lose the picture, most current VCRs will mute the audio as well as the picture,
and display a silent blue screen on the television. I am not trying to scare you out of cleaning your VCR; I am simply attempting to point out that cleaning is not a cure for every VCR problem. On the contrary, in the over twenty years that I have worked on VCRs, I can't count the times that customers have told me. "IT JUST NEEDS CLEANING." About half of the time they are right, which leaves you with about a fifty/fifty chance that your VCR just needs the tape path cleaned. If your VCR has a weak picture or no picture at all, there is a good chance that cleaning the tape path will bring it back to life. If you need to manually adjust the tracking, or the tracking adjustment won't completely clear up the picture, cleaning the tape path will probably solve the problem. |
| How to Clean Your VCR |
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| Let's cover the really simple stuff first. Basically, if the tape touches it, it's part of the Tape Path and needs to be cleaned. This includes Guide Arms and Rollers, guide pins, erase head, audio head, and capstan.
The video head is also included in the tape path, although the tape doesn't actually touch it; the tape floats on a very thin cushion of air around the video head. Let's skip the video head for now except to caution you to be very careful not to touch it while cleaning the parts near it. The video head will be covered in the How to Clean Your Video Heads
section. You need a few pieces of tight-weave, lint-free cloth, some pure isopropyl alcohol, and a few swabs. The lint free cloth must have a tight enough weave that it can't hang on delicate parts or leave strings. The swabs should be purchased from an electronics supplier, as the common household swabs will leave strands behind and could grab the ferrite tips in the video head. If you are thinking, I don't want to run all over town looking for a bunch of stuff or you're not sure about what you need, you may want to click here, I Want the Simple Solution
. Saturate a piece of your cloth with the isopropyl. You will want it soaked, but not wet enough to drip. Wipe all of the guide arms, rollers, and pins with the wet cloth; how you handle these is not critical as long as you don't use enough force to bend them. I want to caution you again not to bump the video head while cleaning these parts. You should be able to use the same cloth to clean all of the arms, pins, and rollers if you keep it out of the grease and dust on the base below them. Dampen another piece of cloth as before and clean the audio head and the erase head. Use a side to side motion on these parts, not up and down. You can apply some pressure using the same rules as before just don't bend them. Unless the cloth is obviously contaminated, you can use it to clean the capstan. You can't get to some capstans, with the cloth on a finger, such as most VCRs manufactured by Matsushita which covers a lot of different brands. If your VCR falls in this category, use the swabs dampened with isopropyl to clean the capstan. If your capstan has a build up on it, see My Capstan Shaft Has Hard Black Gunk On It . You will need to rotate the capstan shaft in order to clean all the way around it. It may be necessary to remove the bottom cover from your VCR and rotate the capstan shaft from below. |
| How to Clean Your Video Heads |
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| In a nutshell, clean the video head, or upper drum, very cautiously. Using a tightly woven, lint-free cloth, dampened with 100% isopropyl alcohol, rub around the video head using a back and forth motion while slowly rotating the head with your free hand. NEVER RUB UP AND DOWN: the little ferrite heads will break. Work your way around the head a couple of times, keeping the cloth in contact with as much of the surface as possible while bridging the gap between the upper and lower
drums . Now look at your cloth. If there are obvious dark streaks or smudges on the cloth you are definitely doing some good. Using a clean isopropyl cloth, or a clean side of the same cloth each time, repeat the cleaning until the cloth appears unstained. After you have cleaned until there are no more streaks on the cloth, give it a couple more cleanings with a clean isopropyl cloth. If the cloth looks uncontaminated after the first cleaning, wipe it a couple more times anyway. I have cleaned video heads that didn't leave any
visible debris on the cloth, but still brought the picture back from the dead. |
| My Capstan Has Hard Black Gunk On It |
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| If your capstan is seriously coated with oxide you will need to do a lot of rubbing, every bit of the hard black gunk must come off. A little fingernail action won't hurt on the capstan but don't use a knife or other metal object on it. Keep wiping the capstan until any build up is gone. It may be necessary to re-dampen the cloth with isopropyl several times. If your capstan is one of the ones that you can't get to with a cloth on your finger, you can wrap the cloth around a plastic knife or similar object. Be sure to
re-wrap the cloth often as you will wear a hole in it quickly. Be sure to clean all the way around the capstan shaft. If you can't rotate it remove the bottom cover of your VCR and rotate the capstan shaft from below. A capstan with a heavy build up of oxide is an indication that your VCR needs a new pinch roller. The pinch roller pinches the tape against the capstan shaft, which pulls the tape through the VCR in play and record modes. A build up on the capstan shaft indicates that the pinch roller is not gripping the tape properly and has allowed the capstan shaft to free spin
against the tape. If this VCR were in my shop, I would replace the pinch roller as well as all the drive belts and the idler if the idler has a rubber tire on it. |
| I Want the Simple Solution |
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| The simple solution is to check out our Online Catalog and order one of our Cleaning Kits. Our Cleaning Kit contains everything you need to clean from three to five VCRs, depending on the amount of cleaning they need. The kit includes ten isopropyl cleaning cloths pre-soaked to the proper saturation, six swabs, and a complete set of step by step instructions on cleaning your VCR. Click Here for our Cleaning Kits |