Hitachi TRQ-225 cassette player 1973

Hitachi TRQ-225 'space age' tape player 1973

The basic thee colours  (white, red & orange) design Hitachi player was simple to use and had a slot in the rear to keep your cassette box while in transit. No tone controls but a fair size circular speaker giving about 2 watts sound output. It always amazes me that the components under maximum stress are made from plastic and 90% of the other mechanism is made from steel & brass.

When this one arrived with me and more than likely with you (design faults show up in all machines) this one had a broken eject button and worn/lose main drive belt and worn tape spool rubbers. The two tricky repairs  I'll describe for you here. After removing mechanism from its cabinet I found one of the 4 fixing bolt mounts had snapped away and eject button 'see saw' plastic bracket had broken in two.

This spring clip arm hold to cassette door closed. Mine became dislodged

Held in place by a short metal pin through the center hinge position. It had been glued back together sometime in the past and I scrapped away the old glue. This time we used clear Aroldite with a small pin melted into the plastic to give extra strength to the repair, keeping the pin in the hole to stop it getting blocked-up. Glue was also applied to the cabinet back fixing rod.

Red arrows showing trouble areas above/ just belt underneath was needed

Because the mechanics have not moved for many years I applied a little sewing machine oil to the moving plates and bars. Rubber pinch roller (wheel that pull tape along) cleaned with alcohol along with the erase and playback heads. I then found the fast forward & rewind spools were struggling to grip the spools and after cleaning those I realized that the rubber had word down and was no longer reaching the spool.

Clear Aroldite fitted at base of back fixing pole

New spools are needed, but a cleaver trick I remember from my video repairing days is to remove the rubber from the spool and wind two even layers of cotton to the inside of the spools, so when rubber is re-fitted it will be nearer (or slightly larger) the grabbing surface and thus makes them work again. As always make sure you take lots of before photos so you can see how it all goes back together.

The broken see saw bar in situ

I think this is an unusual designed player and needs to be preserved, the only dislike I have is the clear cassette housing window, that should have been made to hide in the speaker shape. Good luck with your repair.