b wrote:

....that is not even a theory, that is pure guesswork. have you
checked the A/c head? pinch roller? tape path? torque? consumer
tracking adjust pot condition?all of these are fundamentals and well
known causes for this problem....

Off hand I think the guy is better off just trying to sell it off "as-is".

If it's that series of Sanyo I'm thinking of, those were barely repairable
20 years ago.

The main problem with it, it's 100% plastic, everything, the well the
transport sits in, the load rings, arms, gears, levers.

Those machines were introduced to be price competitive by being built as
cheap as possible to try to get a gain on vhs sales. Other brands like Sony
and Toshiba may have been cheaping down, but were smart enough to leave some
metal where it was needed (like on the transport).

Although his problem might be electrical, there was a re-occurance of a
small cap (either 1uf or 3.3uf) on the pulse line coming from the capstan
motor for one of the servo circuits, more likely the machine is just plain
warped.

No joke, I saw one so bad it was visible by just eyeballing. The guy who
owned it had it on top of the tv and likely between the heat from the
machine and what was coming out the vents of the set just warped the chassis
in under a year or so.

If you got the tape to load, more or less the same results, looked like some
kind of tracking error, enough to be annoying. But I'm telling you, there
wasn't a damn thing wrong with it except mechanical alignment which wasn't
possible anymore.

Just sell it as-is, I really don't think a Sanyo four-thousand series is
worth anything, even in mint condition.

-bruce