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I cleaned and regreased my Victor two spring motor and now it appears I have a spring slip problem. When packing the springs in again, I noticed the bottom spring in the barrel had a completely closed end (around the drive gear axle), while the top spring had an open "C" style end (which goes around the winding gear). It's not broken, I suppose it just needs to be tightened? I read through the threads and found that some people heat and bend the end to grip the axle of the winding gear again.

I guess my question to everyone out there in phonoland is a multifaceted:

A) Is this typical of the springs for the #17 two spring Victor? (one closed ended, one open "C" ended?)

B) Was it worth your time/effort to bend the spring back? Did it work for any length of time, or did it just end up slipping again?

C) Is it better to just buy a couple new springs and save the aggravation?

D) Does anyone know if when you buy new (aftermarket) springs, will they BOTH be closed ended instead of one having that open end?

Someone mentioned in a thread that springs may weaken over time, but it looked like that was open for a little debate, so... any opinions guys?

Thanks!

There are a few ways Victor springs are done. Some have a pin on the shaft that the spring has a pear shaped hole that goes onto the pin. On the spring barrel there is a pin or actually a projection that the hole in the spring fits over. These sometimes are hard to get to "click" into place; the pin on the shaft is a projection like the one on the spring barrel, they look sort of like the head of a common nail projecting from the shaft or spring barrel. Most Victor springs have a fold in them that looks like a quarter part of a circle. The shaft has a quarter part cut out to fit the springs fold and the spring barrel has a slot fitted to catch the fold in the outer part of the spring. Springs can have a combination of these two types of holding them but I like the folded ones the best as you cannot put a spring in backwards! The older springs with holes in them, as mentioned before, are like springs in most other types of talking machines and these are sometimes a little hard to get the springs to engage their catches, especially in the spring barrel part. If the shaft does not catch the spring, then the inner spring coil can be bent inward so that it catches on the projecting pin on the shaft; sometimes this takes several tries. Hope this is helpful!

Tara, do I understand correctly that you mean that the innermost coil is very small and tight on one spring and more open and loose on the other (C shaped)? If that is the case then it might not catch on the pin of the shaft like Orthophonic said. Simple solution is to bend this inner coil inwards to make it tighter, more like the other spring. Usually you won't even have to heat it, because the ends of the spring have alraedy been heated to make the hole. Once the coil is tight enough to snugly fit around the shaft it usually engages the pin. No need to throw out perfectly good springs because of that.
Good luck
Andreas

Orthophonic described it best as a fold that looks like a quarter circle. Usually, heating is not required, but what I have done is use 2 needle nose pliers and duplicated that fold as best I can. When you pack that spring, youll be able to see if its locked in as you wind in a few passes. If you want, you can also snip the end off and start all over, but as you get closer away from the original end, you may need heating.