Beogram 8002: Mechanical Adjustments and a Scraping Sub-Platter

After bringing the electronics up to spec it was time to put this Beogram 8002 also mechanically back to perfect functionality. I usually clean the carriage mechanism and re-lubricate everything, replace the carriage drive belt and adjust the tonearm parallelism. This Beogram also had the 'scraping subplatter issue' that seems to be fairly common.

Let's start with the carriage mechanism. This shows it taken apart.

After cleaning off the old grease and replacing it with a modern synthetic grease it was time to adjust the arm, which was pointing upward:

This is the situation after the adjustment:

On to the scraping sub-platter. This is caused by a compressed plastic disc at the bottom of the main bearing that holds the weight of the platter. This disk can suffer during transport if the platter is not taken out. To get to the disk the spindle needs to be take out:

This is done by loosening the screw in the silvery clamp on the right and rotating the arm that holds the sensor assembly that reads out the tacho disk clockwise:

The main bearing is in the center of the photo. This shows the plastic disc pushed up via the small hole in the bottom of the bearing that can be accessed from the underside of the enclosure:

The small orange disk on the right is a 3D printed part that I developed to shim up the white disk by ~0.5 mm. This elevates the sub-platter a bit and the scraping stops. It can be inserted under the white disk without having to take it out. Just flip it vertical with the small rod or similar that is used to push it up and insert the orange disc, then put everything horizontal again with fine tweezers. 

After this operation the platter ran smoothly again. On to installing the "liberated" aluminum plates and the putting the hood back on.