Beogram 4000: Installing a New Carriage Motor and a New Hood

Yesterday, I finally received the first batch of my new custom manufactured Beolover Carriage Motors for Beogram 4000, 4002, and 4004. They are a direct drop-in replacement for the original motors, which also suffer from dry oilite bearings, similar to the DC platter motors of the later Beogram 4002 and 4004.

Unfortunately, these motors cannot be opened up very easily for oil infusion of the bearings and therefore I had a suitable replacement motor designed. Since they use modern coreless technology they draw less current than the original motors at the same mechanical performance. This is great news for the often failing power transistors in the H-bridge of the carriage drive. They also vibrate less. Read about the motors here, where I describe my tests of these motors in comparison with an original motor.

This was good news for the Beogram 4000 from Australia that I recently restored. My customer had opted for upgrading his carriage motor and so this project was on hold until I would receive the motors. This shows the original motor still installed:

I extracted the motor:

This shows the upper half of the housing removed and the new motor for comparison:

The new motor is slightly shorter and so the leads can conveniently be fed through the bottom cutout of the housing:

This shows the new Beolover motor installed:

I positioned the motor inside the housing making sure the carriage belt sat straight between the two pulleys. This is easily done since the motor is held in place by two vibration insulating EPDM rubber rings, i.e. the motor can be laterally shifted within the housing if necessary to achieve perfect fit.

This Beogram also still needed a new hood installed. This shows the new hood from the dksoundparts store in Denmark together with a reproduction aluminum trim:

I used the my alignment aids to center the strip

and marked the position with a pencil:

After installing the re-painted hood hinge and glueing in the aluminum trim I installed the hood on the Beogram:

Beolovely! I will play this deck a bit more, and then it will be time to send it back to Australia!