On 14 mar, 18:47, "Chris F." wrote:
soon became obvious that the motor was the source of the problem -the
flywheel was dragging against one of the windings during a certain point of
each rotation. I tried swapping the tape drive unit with one from another
SL-2300, only to discover it had the exact same problem.

chances are that these units have too many hours on them already, if
this sort of problem has arisen. Thus it follows that the heads are
probably also on the way out, or soon will be. I wouldn't waste much
time on them.....
B