RL02 drive tuneup was Re: Lorlin Impact Test System Disk...

[Chris Elmquist]

On Monday (03/07/2011 at 09:31PM +0000), Tony Duell wrote:
> > > What do you do? I know the stanadard procedure for RK05 packs, but what 
> > > do you dismantle, and how do you clean, the RL's?
> 
> Actually, I was asking about cleaning the RL _packs_, but doing the 
> drives is an interesting subject too.

Yes. Sorry about that.  I figured that out soon after and sent an apology
post for changing the topic.  It was not intentional... honest!

> > Before I ever try to spin one up, I take the front panel off and remove
> > the black pre-filter.  It is guaranteed to be disintegrating and turning
> > into a fine black powder.  Exactly the kind of thing you don't want
> > sucked into the drive.
> 
> Ineeed. That crumbing foam is a problem in a lot of old elecrtronics. The 
> RL is better than some, the pre-filter is at the front end of those 'heat 
> exchanger' tubes, so the decaying foam isn't plaseted straight onto the 
> absolute filters as it is in an RK05 or RK07. It still helps to remvoe it

What I am seeing is that the intake side of the absolute filter is
completely black with dust from that decaying pre-filter.   In fact,
I tore an absolute filter apart yesterday to reclaim just the outer
plastic frame and when I peeled the pleats apart, they were completely
covered all the way in with the black dust.   The pre-filter on this
unit just crumbled when I touched it.

> > I then take off the top covers and vacuum out the well where the pack
> > sits and wipe the entire area down with a damp cloth.  Clean out ALL
> 
> I think I would use prapn-2-ol to dampen the cloth for this.

I've also used 409 followed by just a damp wipe after that.

> > Then I clean out the rear near the fan.  The fan blades will be loaded
> > up with dust and I take off the grill and wipe those down with a Swiffer
> > duster cloth as well as vacuum the whole fan assembly.
> 
> Most of the time when I'm restorign soemthing, not just RLs, I remvoe the 
> fan unit completely . Most of the time these fans can be taken apart 
> (fixings are often under the lable), there are many varients which I 
> won';t go into here (but will if somebody asks me), but basically you get 
> to the end of th espidnel, remvoe a circlip and washers, and slide the 
> rotor out. The housing and blades are then a lot easier to clean. and 
> you can put a drop of oil on the bearings.

Yes... that makes sense and I am likely to go back over the unit and do
that level of tune up after I've determined it's worth investing that
effort.  As I found with the head crasher drive, spending a bunch of detail
time up front sometimes doesn't pay off ;-)

> > I was just about to post to the list asking if there is a source for these
> > absolute filters still (which I doubt) or if anyone has a process for
> 
> I am tols that a farily common car air filter element can be modified to 
> fit. I do know that some older drives (RK01s?) used a car air filter 
> element as standard...
> 
> Anyway, the problem is that I can't rememebr which car is the one to ask 
> for. And at least over here, you go and buy a filter for a particular 
> car, the shops look at oyu like you're from amrs if you ask for one of 
> particular dimensions. 

Yes.  I've tried shopping by size on the web too...  at all sorts of
HEPA filter suppliers...  but not so easy.

I did find a couple sort of close (in size) filters at one of the DIY
centers here...  one was for a stand-alone room air cleaner and one was
for a vacuum cleaner.  I took one and peeled off the surrounding frame and
cut it to size with a bread knife...   and then glued it into the plastic
frame I had scavanged from one of the real filters with elastomeric caulk.
I haven't tried it in the drive yet.   I'm worried that it won't take
the pressure and will just blow right through the thing...  so I need
to rig the drive so I can spin it up without a pack in there and have
the front air dam removed so that if it does blow it out, it goes into
the room and not into the drive itself.

> Anyone got any ideas?
> [...]
> 
> > At this point, I am brave enough to try to spin the drive up.  I will
> > take a known good not not precious pack and put it in the drive.  You
> > of course have to have a controller connected to the drive and powered
> > on so that the drive gets clock over the interface.  At this point you
> > should have the fault light out and the load light lit.  You can press
> > load and hear the drive spin up.  Hopefully.  I have one drive that will
> > spin up, attempt to load the heads and then immediately fault.  After
> > several experiments trying to get this drive to load the heads so that I
> > could do some of the alignment procedures, I found that it was actually
> > crashing the head into the media and I wrecked that pack.  That drive is
> 
> Do you mean it was headcrashing in the normal sense (wich would indicate 
> possibly faulty heads) or that the head was hitting the edge of the disk, 
> or what?

I believe it was doing both actually.  Sometimes it would get past the
edge and onto the surface and then there'd be the tell-tale sound of
oxide peeling off and then it would fault and unload (what was left of)
the heads.  Inspecting the guinea pig pack, shows a nice grove about 1/4"
in from the outer edge on the upward facing surface.  Dang.

-- 
Chris Elmquist