Picked Up An Old RCA Portable 8-track And Have Started Restoring

[Q8]

About a week ago I found another portable 8-track player at a thrift store. I can’t find any pictures of this particular 8-track player, but it is one of the smaller ones that split in half so you have two separate speakers. It’s an RCA. When I bought it, it was dead, heard the motor run but no action. Finally got around to cracking it open yesterday. It needed a belt. I replaced the belt (and also cleaned everything cause the belt had melted). They buried the belt so that you have to practically take the whole thing apart to get to the belt. I also re-aligned the head, cleaned the head and capstan. I cleaned the pots and connections with Deoxit. Now it works pretty well. I still need to replace some of the indicator light bulbs.

 

[leevitalone1]

cool! another "dead" format in use. I had one of those port. 8 tracks. worked great in the car. moded the speakers to accept the output from the deck.

 

[Quad Linda]

Was it the Mark Eight?

 

[Q8]

Was it the Mark Eight?
View attachment 7891

No, but getting pretty close. The one I have is white/cream colored. No cloth speaker grill, just the white plastic. The panel where the knobs are (and just the empty space on the left speaker) is wood grain. Also there are only two knobs (left and right volume) and a track switch lever on mine. Not sure what the third knob on a Mark Eight is, tone? Also the tape goes in on the right side, not the top. There is a little plastic door that covers the tape bay. This one also uses upteen million D batteries to make sure you get a work out if you go portable. It is a small one like the Mark Eight. Not one of those huge ones (i'm not a big fan of the huge two pieces). This one also has 4 track indicator lights. When together, it's much more cube like than most of them, which tend to be more rectangular. It's not a perfect cube, but nearing cube shape. It doesnt use the hinge and latch like the Mark Eight, it kinda pops together using the slider conection thingy. Also on that one, it looks like when it is closed, the speakers/controlls are on the inside, where on mine the speakers/controlls are to the outside (even though you still cant utilise the second speaker when its together. I'll try to take some pics some time.

 

[Quad Linda]

What's the model #?

Most portable 8's used 8 D batteries, since the motor can consume a lot of power. It also means that no transforming is required for a cigarette lighter plug, since 8 x 1.5V = 12V.

 

[Q8]

Yeah, it does have the port of a cig lighter plug as well.

Now this was driving me crazy yesteday. I couldnt't find a model number on it. I looked at all sides of it, inside and out. Inside the battery compartment. There is plenty of stuff stamped into the plastic, but not the model number. I thought I was crazy and just missing it, but I really dont think they stamped one into it, maybe there was a sticker that fell off? I didn't see any obvious place where a missing sticker was either. So the model number is unknown. When I look up pictures of RCA portables, none of them look exactly like it. None of even the same case design. It was manufactured in Japan, but probably most RCA stuff was.