Argus 844-P Repair

[Barry Nofzinger]

First, thank you for including me in this forum. I acquired an Argus 844-P 8 mm/Super 8 mm projector when my father passed away in December 2018. The motor runs and the lamp works, but the belt does not drive the reels like it should. Is this easy and cheap to repair? Is there possibly a repair video online that shows how to do this? Thank you in advance.

[Janice Glesser]

Hi Barry and welcome to the Forum. I'm generally not one for discouraging repairs to vintage film projectors... however the projector you have may not be worth the cost or effort. The 844-P was manufacture some time in the 60's. Argus is not known for making high quality projectors and I doubt too many are around today. I couldn't even find a picture on Google, You might try posting a picture of the front and back with the back cover off. It's possible someone may have this machine...or maybe we can see how to replace the belt. Most likely you will have to find an O-ring to use for the belt.

Even if you replace the belt the lamp is a big problem. What will you do if the lamp burns out? The bulbs for those machines today are costing between $40-$120 and have a very short life span (15 hrs). I know the projector probably has sentimental value...but if you are interested in showing some of your old home films I recommend finding a better projector. The age and condition of the projector may harm your films.

[Jill Blackston]

Hello. I have recently bought an Argus 848 Dual, and we have exactly the same problem as stated above. We bought a replacement belt, which fits very tightly and does make both reels turn, but we can't view videos. Any idea what we can do to repair this?

[Nantawat Kittiwarakul]

Hello. I have recently bought an Argus 848 Dual, and we have exactly the same problem as stated above. We bought a replacement belt, which fits very tightly and does make both reels turn, but we can't view videos. Any idea what we can do to repair this?

Seems like that the projector somehow failed to properly moving the film through the gate, causing that blurry mess.

Is it dual8 projector capable of playing both Regular8 and Super8? If yes - check the film format setting first. Might be as simple as that.

[Dominique De Bast]

I don't know this projector but with some other ones, you get that "unsteable" picture if you don't depress the loading button manually. Maybe it's another problem with your machine (the one Nantawat suggested ?) but everything worths to be tried.