[Arran]

Arran

Well, I'm impressed...especially the 1975 Newport... You should start a new topic in the Bar & Grill and post some photos of it.

How well are your 8-tracks holding up? I remember "back in the day" the foam pressure pads behind the tape in the cartridge would wear out quickly...and this was when the cartridges were merely months old. Plus the occasional tape breaking...now that they are decades old, how are they doing?

Ron;
  Once I repair an eight track cartridge they seem to hold up just fine, but it is not really plug and play user friendly since almost all of them do need to be repaired, and it's not a job for anyone that hate restringing dial cords. I usually remove the foam pressure pads as I repair them, many used a black foam that when it breaks down it becomes gummy, which is bad news should some of those sticky chunks work their way into the tape reel inside, often they are unnecesary for playing the tape but there are exceptions. The ones that used a grey foam seem to hold up better for some reason. Strangely enough there were many carts that used a pair of felt pressure pads that were glued onto a silicon bronze spring, RCA and Ampex carts used to use that type, about all you have to do with those is either glue the pads back on or replace them with new felt.
  It isn't usually the tape itself that breaks so much as the foil splice that joins the two ends comes off with age, though if the splice breaks at the wrong time the machine will keep drawing the tape and the tape will get drwan into the machine, sometimes kinked up like an accordion. Unless the tape jams whilst the capstan keeps drwaing the tape out, or it gets wrapped around the capstan itself, the tape does not usally break. Whatever glue they used seems to crystallize and then fall right off the tape, it seems to be water based like the glue they use on envelopes. What I use as a substitute is that aluminum duct tape, not the plastic Red Green/Macgiver stuff but the stuff for heating and AC ducts, the glue they use does not dry out, and the aluminum conducts which is what you need to trigger the track changing solenoid.
  Regarding the pinch rollers and whether the tires disintegrate or not, well it depends on which manufacturer made the cartridge and when. From what I have noticed certain years of Ampex and GRT made cartridges have problems with the pinch rollers either disolving into black goo or becoming crumbly, so those two companies must have used pinch rollers made from natural rubber that was not vulcanized properly, if at all. Fortunately most companies used some sort of synthetic rubber on the pinch roller tires, in some cases they would make a solid plastic pinch roller to cut costs, either way there are no problems with either type deteriorating, though the plastic ones can slip. One thing I did find out is that the Ampex carts with the rotting pinch rollers used rollers of the same dimensions as an RCA cartridge, so a good source of replacements is a junker RCA cartridge, or one that you don't care for.
Regards
Arran