Bell & Howell 466A Pulldown Claw Adjustment

[Fred Hess]

I am having the same problem (and probably the same anxiety). Can you go into a bit more detail about how you made the adjustment and how you made the measurement? Seems as if there is some extreme fine-tuning involved and I'm a bit nervous about how to proceed. Any help appreciated!!

[John Burgess]

That’s good news, it was well worth giving it a go.
John

[John Meyer]

I got the claws adjusted to exactly the 0.04" spec. It now works:

[John Meyer]

Thanks! That give me a little more confidence to proceed. I hope to be able to do this without having to remove the entire mechanism. Everything else appears to be working just fine and I don't want to mess things up if I can fix it with just a few judicious tweaks.

[John Burgess]

is stationary in the gate . I t worked fine so fingers crossed if you give it a go.
Sorry for the messed up post, don’t know what happened!
John

[John Burgess]

Frame

[John Burgess]

Hi John
Had the reverse happen to me on a Fujica St8 machine. I could not locate a service manual so had a go myself. After removing the mech from the casing I carefully bent the claw back a little allowing to retract when the

[John Meyer]

After I posted, I found the service manual:

Bell & Howell 456A - 256Z - 456X - 456XF - 456XP Projector Service Manual

It says to pull the lamp and insert a bending tool from behind the gate and bend the claw towards the gate. It sounds a little hit-or-miss, but I guess that's what I'll try.

[John Meyer]

I just got a "free" (I had to pay $90 shipping) Bell & Howell 466A projector. It is clean and everything works great ...

... except,

the pulldown claw doesn't engage all the way. I can see how to adjust the side-to-side position of the claw, but not how to change how far it goes into the sprockets.

From the following picture you may be able to see the pad which is attached to the cam arm and rides on the spring-ring cam (I labeled it "Warp Plate"), forcing it in and out of the gate as the main shaft rotates. It looks to me as though that pad has eroded and that is why the claw doesn't go in far enough.

Does anyone have any idea of how to get the claw to move further to the left in this picture? The pad is rivited on, and getting the claw shaft out looks like a major undertaking. About the only idea I have is to somehow bond a thin piece of material onto the felt pad.

Thanks!!