I would first scope the NTSC output and see if there is a color burst. If there is it is likely too far off frequency. If there is not then the color killer is activated.

In any event, unfortunately for the guy this is liable to be fairly expensive repair. And then, my highest recommendation to anyone still using any format VCR is to copy everything to DVDs. In fact they now have super long lived DVDRs for archival purposes because they have found that the regular DVDRs do not last forever.

Sorry about my error, but the format convertor is not a standard feature of multi-rate VCRs.