B&H TQ1 resurrection with passenger!

[Martin Davey]

The latest corpse renovated and brought back to life was this TQ1 (652). It was purchased as a nostalgia trip as I remember them from school, but it seemed a lot smaller to me now rather than the memories I had of the one at school, especially compared to the little plastic K6 toy I had then. It is quite a late one with a A1/235 lamp and a transistor amp. The transformer had a stamp on it that read 08/73, so I presume this gives a date of its construction at the tail end of TQ1s?

When I first get a new projector, typically off Ebay, I do not obviously plug it in straight away, but spend some time checking it over and cleaning it. I was pleased to see that the motion turned over very smoothly via the itching knob which gave me inspiration that this could be a runner. The pinch rollers around the sound drum were also nice and springy. The rear cover was taken off and the first thing I was greeted with was the skeletal leg of the mouse sitting on top of the capacitor, something not in the Ebay listing! I knew that as I went through the machine more of the mouse would be discovered. The skull came next but most of the skeleton was found in the amplifier section in the crypt of the machine. Also the foam around the speaker had also disintegrated, so overall the projector was quite dirty throughout.


After some period of cleaning and initial lubrication I felt it was time to see if the projector does actually work with power applied. Placing the projector on a stand in the garden, it was plugged in via a long extension cord and RCB, and used a new mains (jones?) plug purchased online. The plug was switched on and pleasingly the pilot light on the operation panel came on. After a few minutes I turned the operation switch to forward and then light, followed by turning on the amp which in turn activated the exciter lamp. It worked perfectly so shortly after I brought it indoors and ran a short film through it with no problems whatsoever, inc the auto threader. New belts were purchased as the older ones were stretched and noisy in use, and every surface deep cleaned and polished where possible. Sadly It has no height adjustment so for the moment a piece of wood is used instead. The speaker output has been updated to a 2 pin DIN.

I’m very pleased with it and the fact it works really well is a great bonus!

[Clive Casey]

Great that you got it all up and running, I hope you have paid the seller from eBay extra for the mouse.

[Jason Moffatt]

If its running well has it had the worm gear replaced ?. The original gears are white in colour and usually have a few cracks. but sometimes still work ok.

[Martin Davey]

Thanks Clive and Jason. One of the mouse legs was missing so I did think about asking for a small refund.
It has the original white wormgear. Could not see any cracks after cleaning off the old lubrication and as I said it turns over very, very smoothly. I was expecting to find the worm gear needing replacing the worm gear which is why I got the non animation 652 to avoid isolating and removing all the connected parts for that animation feature. But for the moment I'm leaving it as is.