Beogram 8000: Re-Attaching the Aluminum Panels

Time for getting pretty! The Beogram 8000 that I am restoring right now is now running nicely. But, like in most of these units, the aluminum panels are detached. Usually, it is no big deal to glue them back on. Here are a few impressions:

The panels were originally attached with some foam based double sided tape. The foam degrades and the panels come off. This is what one typically finds:

A gooey sticky soft mess! Very difficult to remove. I usually put ethanol drenched paper towel wads on there (make sure the veneer is not touched) and then wait for 30 mins:

After that the goo has softened up and can be scraped off with a plastic razor blade. Some residue remains, but this does not matter:

Then I usually glue 4-40 washers to the enclosure as spacers. I use quick setting epoxy:

Then I add some more epoxy on the top of the washers and place the aluminum panel:

Once it is in place, I secure it with carpenter's clamps and a weight for the top right corner, which is not accessible with clamps. This step is crucial, since one essentially only has one shot with epoxy. If you try this at home, make sure that the panel is really in the right spot. Applying the clamps often shifts the panel a bit, i.e. it needs to be kept aligned during the clamping process.

The next step was to put the lid back on. Unfortunately, someone already reattached it once with Gorilla glue and the panel came off again. The glue residue proved very well attached to the plastic hinge and I was not able to remove it.

since the glue residue was flat enough and its thickness similar to 4-40 washers, the situation could be rectified by adding a good amount of epoxy to the residue and more importantly to the regions that were uncoated in between, and placing the lid on top:

Again I secured it with clamps and used a pen to press the hinge upward above the power cord opening. This did the job!