Hello everyone I had gotten a few years back a Zenith VR1830 which When I had gotten it it was working fine but then I had given it to a friend of mine who needed a machine to play some of his VHS tapes on but then he had gotten a machine later on that was a 4-Head HiFi unit from Goodwill so then he put it in storage and it had been sitting in his basement for a couple of years unused, anyways I had gotten it back from him today to have as a spare as the only VCR I have hooked up to my LCD Projector in my basement is a BPC unit which if it goes bad I don't think I could ever fix it again.
Anyways I went to hook it up to see if it was still working or not and sure enough the unit would act like it was going through the power-up procedure but then it would just shut off instead of staying powered on, and so I took it apart to see what was going on and sure enough the belt that goes from the motor to the cam assembly on the bottom was dragging (it wasn't spinning the cam gear like it was supposed to) so it obviously needs a new belt for the cam gear drive assembly, but the only problem is, I'm not sure how to get the belt off of the cam gear assembly because the belt is behind a piece of metal that holds the worm gear that drives the cam gear in place, so my question is, what's the best way to get the old belt off without breaking the worm gear assembly?

Pictures posted below of the unit in question.


And Yes it is a sideways loading unit for those of you who are wondering.

Anyone? Anyone know of a way to get the belts off of this VCR without breaking it?

I've had dealings with these before where there was a metal plate in front of the belt. Best advice is just simple, careful, teardown until you can get to it without osbstruction.

I've had dealings with these before where there was a metal plate in front of the belt. Best advice is just simple, careful, teardown until you can get to it without osbstruction.
I've tried that but the only way to safely remove that assembly is by unsoldering some of the wires attaching the circuit board for that assembly and then carefully removing that assembly so it doesn't break the wires for the motor off, but even then its kind of a pain to get to, I'm assuming theres a way to get that pully and worm-gear assembly that the belt attaches to in that assembly out of that loading/cam-gear assembly without breaking the gear. But I'm not sure what it is.

They're a real pain. I know. There's gotta be a better way.

They're a real pain. I know. There's gotta be a better way.

Yeah, hopefully I can get that belt replaced (possibly I could use an o-ring for a belt on this unit because its a really small belt).

EDIT: got the belt fixed but now it seems like its a timing issue as for some reason the VCR won't go through the power-up sequence properly which then shuts down the machine, and I've tried re-timing the loading mechanism underneath but every single time it goes back into the wrong timing and makes the loading mechanism jam up which causes the machine to shut down during the power up sequence.

I've fixed timing issues before on older Panasonic and Quasar Machines pretty successfully but never really worked on Zenith/JVC units before very successfully.

Any ideas as to how to fix this timing issue?

I worked on a couple of those in the 90's but can't remember what the mechanism looked like. You may have a flaky mode switch, I think that was the era for them. Try cleaning it with FaderLube.

Mode switches were a problem. Also there were a few screws
that needed tightening on some JVC/Zeniths but I dont remember
the ones since I almost never did VCR, I hated them........
IIRC it was under a PCB on the bottom. I would ask the VCR
man but sadly he is dead now.

BTW I still got one of these units. Dont use it often but
its never let me down.

Mode switches were a problem. Also there were a few screws
that needed tightening on some JVC/Zeniths but I dont remember
the ones since I almost never did VCR, I hated them........
IIRC it was under a PCB on the bottom. I would ask the VCR
man but sadly he is dead now.
One of the 3 screws provided electrical ground for that board. The official fix was remove the grounding screw, add a small external tooth star washer to the screw reinstall and tighten 'er down.

I would always shoot a little dab of DeOxit into the mode switch too.

OK Thanks for the tips, I'll take a look into those issues, especially the mode switch. Where might I find the mode switch in this VCR?
Also Blast, the mechanism for this VCR is a large flywheel type gear (similar to what the old record changer mechanisms used except scaled down for a VCR Mechanism) that's attached to a small wormgear that's got a belt path attached to one side that then attaches to a motor that drives the whole mechanism.