[starbond]

Ah ok, thanks Eric. It got me thinking though. Made two very important discoveries last night
First, is that there's only ONE roller that pretty much works the RR/FF mechanism. I popped off the C-clip and took a look, sure enough it was pretty stiff and dry...not good. Also why does it have foam in the center?
so I popped off the ring, and flipped it inside out. the inside edge is a little softer and matte, so its better than nothing. Looks like I need a new idler tire...

Second...the way the spools sit in the VX cartridge are right on top of each other, they basically scrape along during play back = high friction.So I rubbed a bit of lubrication across the tops of the spools where they touch each other, and suddently, BOOM, FFD and RWD work much much better now. Leave it to Panasonic to design a cassette that if dried out, doesnt work well at all.

So now my next steps is to open every tape and rub some lubrication across it. and THEN...try to fix the color board. I bought a cheap NTSC signal generator on ebay. But I suppose it wont be much help without a scope..