Beogram 8002 (5633): Finishing Up - Reattachment of Aluminum Panels and a New Dust Cover with Transferred Original Trim

I recently completed the functional restoration of a Beogram 8002 from a customer in Missouri. A few days ago, I received the new dust cover back from Beomazed, who performed his magic to transfer the original 'Beogram 8002' labeled trim to a new pristine reproduction dust cover. Since the Beogram had played flawlessly while the dust cover was getting done, it was time to complete the unit and put everything back together.

Here is an impression of the final result:

Looks pretty close to new! Beolovely!

To get there, I first glued the loose main aluminum panels back into place. The double-sided tape that was used to attach the panels is degraded in most cases. I usually remove the tape remnants by placing pieces of isopropyl alcohol-wetted paper towel on the degraded tape. After a 1 hr soak, the stuff can usually be rubbed off.

I usually use epoxy and some M3 washers to glue the main plate back into its place:

Once washers and epoxy are in place, I carefully adjust the plate and clamp/weigh it down:

For the small plate I used double sided tape:

Usually, the steel plate that is attached to the black panel under the arms also comes loose:

I usually use double-sided tape for this one, too:

The next steps were putting the Beogram back into its enclosure and installing the new reproduction hood with the transferred original trim. Then it was time for a test spin. I selected one of my favorite David Bowie albums, ChangesOneBowie (RCA Victor APL1-1732), a great compilation that was released in 1976. Here is an impression of this lovely album playing on this like-new Beogram 8002:

After this test, I carried the Beogram to my photo studio and took a nice set of pictures.

Enjoy!:

Beogram 8000 Type 5613: Finishing up

Since the previous post on this Beogram 8000 project, I have been enjoying playing records on this Beogram turntable while I looked for a replacement dust cover and back plate.

I was able to find the two pieces I needed for the dust cover repair but the dust cover needed a little bit of polishing to be an acceptable replacement.

The replacement dust cover isn't without a few blemishes but it polished up nicely without requiring a full dust cover restoration.

Here is the back plate I found to replace the broken, original back plate.

My preferred way of removing and installing a Beogram 8000/8000 dust cover assembly is with the hinge bar removed.  I find it much easier to install the dust cover and tonearm compartment lid without being attached to the back plate.

Here is the back plate attached to the Beogram 8000 cabinet.

Now the dust cover can be attached and the metal hinge rod inserted to hold it in place with the cabinet.

I stop the hinge rod as it reaches the tonearm compartment lid hinge.
For the metal tonearm compartment lid I still had to reattach the lid to the hinge.
I prefer to do that with the dust cover and lid hinge in place so I can align the metal door when I attach it.

Another task here is to replace the metal door hinge damping grease.  
Here are photos of the new damping grease and the metal door hinge attached to the cabinet.

To attach the metal lid to the hinge I use the same type of VHB tape that I used for the deck panel.

Using the dust cover, the side of the cabinet and the control panel as visual guides, I fit the metal lid to the VHB.

The fit is perfect and the new damping grease works great.

The final steps are to attach the spring damping mechanism for the dust cover.

Here are the pieces for the dust cover damping mechanism.
There is a leaf spring and a hinged bracket that fits into the back of the cabinet and into the hooks of the metal receiving bracket epoxied to the underside of the dust cover.

These components along with the back plate are common areas where these Beogram 800x turntables get broken.  I will mention it again, the back plate should really not be removed if it is still properly attached to the back of a Beogram 800x cabinet.
The most common problem of the dust cover damping not working is that the original, double-sided tape for the metal receiving bracket has detached from the underside of the dust cover.  That causes the dust cover lowering and raising mechanics to fail.
If that happens the damping hinge mechanism needs to be disconnected from the metal receiving bracket first...then the dust cover removed (by pulling the metal rod for the piano type hinge out).

The fat end of the leaf spring fits under the tension set screw (shown with the Allen wrench above) while the narrow end of the spring fits into the hinged bracket.

The flat, plastic part of the bracket faces the front and the top of the hinged bracket fit into the hooks of the metal, receiving bracket (located under the dust cover).

It seems a bit odd the first time you work with this damping mechanism but it isn't really difficult.
I suggest starting out by making sure the hex tension screw is opened up to where it is easy to fit the leaf spring underneath.  That will also have the least tension on the spring when the hinged bracket is fit into its position.

When the components are attached as in the above photo, the Allen wrench is used to tighten and apply tension to the spring damping of the dust cover.

The service manual says to adjust the tension so when lifting the lid it will automatically seek its top position when the lid opening reaches about 32 cm.
The tension adjustment should also result in the lid lowering operation automatically closing when the lid opening reaches 12 cm.

Here is the fully open position.

The last piece to fit in the cabinet is the flat, plastic trim piece that hides the hinge damping mechanism.

That completes this project and clears space on my workbenches for the next group of Beogram turntables.

Bay Area Beogram 8002: Cabinet Work Completion to First Record Play

Today I finally got this Beogram 8002 turntable into a listening room to begin record play testing.

It took a little longer than I anticipated to finish up the reassembly to arrive at this point but I took a little detour to fix the chipped rosewood trim on the front panel.

A cosmetic repair of the trim was not originally in the plans for this restoration but the more I looked at it the more I didn't like leaving the front panel chipped like that.

The journey down the path of repair for something like this can end up taking extra time of course and this one certainly did. When working on repairs like this glue is involved so that means waiting time for glues to cure.

Then there are times where it takes more than one attempt to make the repair. That also happened here.

In my initial repair attempt I decided to just try and patch the areas that were chipped. In this case two...a large chip and a much smaller one.

The fit and install of the patch for the larger chip went well. I used a piece I cut out of some rosewood veneer I keep for this type of repair. The fit and pattern match was good.

After gluing the repair patch in place I cut off the excess, sanded the repair and applied some boiled linseed oil for a finish.

It should have been a nice repair but the small patch turned too dark and I realized that the small remaining chip was too small to make a good repair. Even if I just used some wood filler.

It didn't look terrible and was better than having the chips there but I decided I couldn't leave it like this.
The large patch fit good but darkened too much and my eyes kept being drawn to the small chip that still needed to be fixed.

My rework of the fix was to cut out the first repair attempt and make the cut so that there would be just one, rectangular patch piece needed to cover both of the original chips.

I selected a lighter section of rosewood from my veneer piece in the second attempt. 
Here is the result of the second (and final) attempt.

The patch piece still darkened but I think overall this patch is much better.  It is far from perfect but better than the original chips.

As a side note...I investigated using some rosewood trim from a spare Beogram 800x turntable cabinet that was beyond repair.  I also looked at some spare Beocord 800x and Beomaster 6000/8000 cabinets for possible donor trim pieces.  In all cases the cabinets I have in my spare parts collection are all darker than the rosewood trim on this project. So my veneer piece is as good a match as I could get.

Returning to the tonearm compartment, I installed the nice, clean replacement hinge piece for the lid.
I used kilopoise grease for the lid damping and temporarily held the hinge in place with the original hinge bar for this Beogram.

The Beogram 8002 cabinet is now ready to start all of the reassembling of its components.

The first steps were to put the main turntable components (circuit board, transformer, control panel and floating chassis) back into the cabinet.

I like to do that first because until those are in place I can't close up the two halves of the cabinet and I don't like having that loose when I work with the dust cover and tonearm compartment lid.

In my haste to do the reassembly I neglected to photograph the re-install steps this time but for reference, here are the install steps from the last Beogram 8002 project.

Here is this Beogram 8002 with its internal components installed and ready for the dust cover and tonearm compartment lid installation.

For the dust cover installation I prefer to secure the dust cover and tonearm compartment hinge assembly together with the Beogram 8002 bar hinge.  By removing the bar hinge at the beginning it saved me from removing the back plate of the cabinet that has the hinge bar mounts for the cabinet frame. Removing that plate can often result in a loose rear plate because it has plastic clips that easily break off.

After I had the dust cover and tonearm compartment pieces secured with the Beogram 8002 bar hinge I attached the dust cover damping spring assembly.

Here is the dust cover installed and with the damping spring set properly to allow slow lowering of the dust cover.

The dust cover has two rubber bumper pads that mount in the front part of the lid (where it rests when lowered all the way to the deck). Those rubber pieces are always deteriorated and broken off.

I cleaned out the original bumper pad residue and installed my own 3D printed bumpers.

The dust cover now becomes an alignment guide for installing the tonearm compartment lid.

I used the same 3M VHB double-sided tape on the tonearm compartment lid as I did for the Beogram 8002 metal deck.

Everything looks like it is installed and this Beogram 8002 is ready to play some records.

It is off to my office where I can listen to records on this Beogram while I work.
Tonight I was in the mood to hear some nice jazz recordings so I broke out Quincy Jones "Walking In Space" and Lonnie Liston Smith "Live!".  

Don't stay up.  These listening tests may take a while.