Philips Ag2101D won't eject records

[Old Sparky]

I'm in the middle of returning one of these in-car record players to working order - this one being made around 1970 as it has the electronically governed motor as  fitted to the latedr 22GA101. Basically it's working, although I'm hoping to be able to replace the missing stylus brush/lever assembly, pilot lamp and rubber 'flap'.  However although the autostop trips at the end of a record, the disc isn't ejected automatically as it should be, despite my having cleaned/relubed the autostop mechanism.  I have a full service manual for this 'ancient' bit of I.C.E., and ahave several times serviced them in the fairly recent past. but, despite that, cannot figure out why the records (7" 45s with the latrge centre hole for those unfamiliar with the 'Auto Mignon' as these are called) don't automatically eject.  If I operate the machine without a disc inserted, the eject mechanism works OK, which suggests that the disc is fouling something, but I can't for the life of me see what.  The 'centering disc', a spring loaded device which goes into the centre hole of the record to hold it in place on the turntable whilst playing, appears to work as it should.  Too much friction here would obviously stop the record from being released.
Does anyone have any suggestions as to what may be the cause of this fault? BTW, I think this is worth trying to repair/restore, as there is one in tatty condition on U.S. eBay on a 'Buy it Now' of almost £200 at the moment!!

[Old Sparky]

I've just noticed that the 2101 on U.S. eBay has been listed since February 2016, so it#s obviously not selling! They are, after all, AFAIK, a minority interest, even amongst Classic car owners. In recent years I've only met 3 people who have them, for one of whom I restored one a couple of years ago for use with a Radiomobile 108SR in a Ford Zephyr or Zodiac. Maybe i shouldn't spend too much time or money on the one currently in my workshop after all!

[Mike Watterson]

Yes. For gauging "price", I ignore "Buy it Now" prices and also auctions with no bids. I only search for "completed sales" (a little check box).
There seems to be ever more high priced stuff on eBay that's not selling, though some UK prices have gone up while Continental & USA prices seem to have fallen.

The real worth of something has no relationship to what people are prepared to pay, c.f. a wooden Portadyne or Pilot with a Bakelite version of same thing, or DAC10 at 1/4 price of the DAC90a (same year and the DAC10 has a Bakelite back and is actually the deluxe version of essentially the same radio). Or Pye M78 vs Ever Ready C, or the difference in price between the Marconi and Ever Ready versions of the same Plessey made "lunchbox" / "personal" radio, based on RCA's 1941 BP10. The Marconi one featured in a GCSE course as example of "Art Deco" though it's not, apart from being twenty years too young.

Real collecting isn't about the monetary value, or fashion, but about collecting what you want to collect, for whatever reason you want. Ironically eventually such collections can be worth more (as a single entity) than idiots that buy stuff they know little about purely as an "investment". Collecting isn't investing.

My only criteria on spending money* on a restore, it will it be reasonably authentic and is it rare enough that buying another in better condition at £5 isn't a better solution. It would hardly be worth restoring any of them purely for resale value.

(* Oh, I have to actually have the money to buy the parts / materials etc)

[Old Sparky]

Having stripped down the AG210D this afternoon, I am at least on the trail of the cause of non-ejection, which appears to be a combination of various parts needing relubrication, plus a tweak to a couple of mechanical adjustments, one of which should be set so that, 'when the pickup arm is in the 'off' position, there should be no perceptible horizontal play between the arm and the switching bracket'. This acheived by a judicious adjustment to one of two grub screws. What i can't understand, however, is why asetting which hadn't been disturbed frnew would need adjustment, as nothing relevant appeared to be bent or otherwise not as originally made! As to the AG2101D for sale on U.S. eBay, it's the only one on offer, so no actual sale prices to check up on.

[Crackle]

Probably wear and stiff grease in bearings and dust and fluff in end stops and other moving parts.
Mike

[Old Sparky]

DEspite several further attempts to solve this problem, I still cannot get the auto eject mechanism to work. Occasionally the disc will be ejected, but 99% of the time the motor is switched off at the end of the record, but the turntable need up to about a quarter turn more to trip the eject mechanism. This, to me, points to too much friction somewhere, but I don't know where. The only parts I haven't dismantled, cleaned & relubed are the tow idler wheel (jockey pulley) assemblies, which I left alone as records play at the correct speed, although the TT does stop rather abruptly at the end. This I put down to the fact that two idlers are used, rather than the one used in domestic record players, and, unlike in a conventional player, these, at least in the example on which I'm working, aren't retracted away from the TT's inner rim at the end of playing, but remain in contact with it, acting as a brake to stop the TT when the motor is switched off.

[Mike Watterson]

How does it detect the arm has reached the middle?

[Old Sparky]

Mike, and others - This afternoon I found the cause of the trouble. There is a 'feeler' lever whose free end makes contact with a cam gear which is at the centre of the turntable, the idea being that when the end of a record is reached the end of this feeler lever contacts one of the cogs in the cam, then, as the turntable revolves, the feeler is tripped, thereby activating the eject mechanism, pushing the disc out through the slot in the front of the player. The free end (nearest the centre of the turntable) of the feeler was bent downwards, causing it to scrape on the deck base plate. Gently bending this feeler so that it floats just (about 1mm)clear of the deck base plate has, on the strength of playing 3 or 4 sides, rectified the fault. I can now reassemble the player, which will in future hopefully work as designed. This was a case of needing to take a break from the job and return to it a day later, with fresh eyes and brain!! It was also a case of something being restored to working order many years after it's projected life span. This AG2101D is about 45 years old, and probably one of the last to be made.

[Mike Watterson]

Great news.
Record players were installed in cars before radio broadcasting started and inspired an early car radio maker to call themselves Motorola. Sadly gone.
Network infrastructure -> Nokia Networks
Semiconductors split in two and spun off (Possibly one part bought by ex Philips NXP to be now bought by Qualcomm who are more interested in royalties than product)
Phone division bought by Google, split in two and handsets / brands (but most phone IP kept) sold to Lenovo (who at different times bought IBM's laptops, PCs and x86 server divisions).

[Old Sparky]

If record players were installed in cars before broadcasting started, they would surely have been wind-up gramophones, bearing in mind that broadcasting started soon after WW1. I think KDKA Pittsburgh claims to be the oldest station still on the air, and that, IIRC, predates 2MT & 2LO by at least a year. I didn't know how the name Motorola came about, though.