chris hipkiss wrote:
Thanks David,

I have only cleaned the moving bits with contact cleaner so far.....not
wanting to get any stuff on the head that might cause probs.

I resisted the temptation to get in there with WD40

STOP IMMEDIATELY! CALL A TECH RIGHT NOW.

DO not EVER use WD-40 in this stuff. DO NOT use contact cleaner to clean
the tape path. You have almost certainly made the problem worse. The
heads also need to be cleaned on a regular basis.

Some mechanical fault causing tapes not to load ,it just keeps throwing up
error message numbers 1 ,3,5 and its even given an 87 error message !!

You need to do regular PM on these machines. It's like changing the oil
on your car. If you don't change the oil, you'll wreck your engine. Get
this machine to a competent tech immediately and have him fix it.

I have spoken to Tascam UK and they tell me that deck mechanism replacement
is the easiest answer.(£400.00)

Yes, it may be the easiest but its also the costliest !!

Maybe not, it depends on what else you have done to wreck it now.

Mechanical adjustment sounds good, I didn`t know that the decks could be
adjusted??

These decks require CONSTANT cleaning and adjustment. The service manual
has a whole section on it. You will need a scope and an alignment tape,
and the alignment tape is a few hundred bucks but can be used on many
different machines. But if you are at the level of putting goddamn CONTACT
CLEANER in the tape path, it is time to put the machine down right now and
get a tech in.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."