Michigan Beogram 8002 Restoration: Final Reassembly

I left off in the previous post of this project with a broken Beogram 8002 cabinet hinge guide...for the service position hinge.

That type of break on these cabinets is difficult to repair with any reliability.

I have tried unsuccessfully to repair these before and it was the same section of the cabinet hinge that is broken on this Beogram 8002.

Without a good spare Beogram 8002 cabinet to replace this with, I had to attempt a hinge guide repair again.

This broken hinge guide presented a new challenge because it also had a crack in it.

So I had two repair steps.

One was to reinforce the broken piece that I needed to glue back onto the cabinet frame.

The second then, was to glue the reinforced piece onto the cabinet so it is strong enough to support any pressure from the metal hinge rod.

I used two glue types for this repair - Bondo Steel Reinforced epoxy and JB Weld reinforced epoxy.  The latter was used in the last fill of the broken section.

The repair effort turned out successful but the various glue steps and time waiting for epoxy to cure took a total of three days.

Here is a look at the repair scar after I was done.

It still isn't pretty but the scar is smooth and is not visible unless the Beogram is upside down.

The important thing is that exercising the cabinet open to the service position and back closed does not cause the repair to break again.

Since the service position is not something a Beogram 8002 owner will typically use, I am satisfied with the repair.

It means the internal Beogram 8002 components can be reinstalled.

Another quick cabinet problem I decided to address was the metal lid hinge damping.
The Nyogel 767A damping grease I used in the previous post did not result in a slow enough closing of the lid.  I could hear the lid when it reached the closed position.  With proper damping the lid should be silent.

I pulled the metal hinge bar out again from the section holding the metal lid to the cabinet so I could remove the lid for re-greasing.

The area highlighted in yellow is where I re-applied damping grease.

This time I used Nye Lubricants PG-44A Grease.  It is much thicker than the Nyogel 767A damping grease and the result was just what I was looking for.

Next was the re-installation of the internal Beogram 8002 components.

That meant removing my test point leads from PCB 1 and attaching the metal lid to the microcomputer assembly (PCB 2).

I put some thermal conductive tape on the uC IC.

Applied some thermal grease.

Attached the metal lid and checked that the heatsink on the lid was pressed onto the thermal grease.

Next up should be some photos of the reinstalling of the floating chassis assembly, PCB 1 and 2, the transformer assembly and the Control Panel assembly.

However, I was so concerned with the service position hinge repair that I spent all of my effort carefully installing the components and did not take any photos :-(

So instead, the next photos are after the internal components were installed.

Here is a sequence of photos I took as the metal deck lid was closing.  It shows the slow lowering of the lid that now touches down onto the cabinet silently.

I did a little polishing of the dust cover and I will now move on to some record listening to wrap this project up.

The only issues with this Beogram 8002 are a couple of cosmetic problems.
The left side front of the cabinet has some small pieces of rosewood veneer missing and the Beogram platter is not pretty. 

Again, the Beogram 8002 platter should never be cleaned with anything other than some very mild soap (if even that) and distilled water.  A pristine Beogram 8002 platter should only be dusted with a dry cloth.  Platters like the one in this project were exposed to some sort of cleaning fluid at some point and the top coating from the B&O factory has been damaged.

That doesn't affect playing records great which is what these turntables do.