I picked up this projector last summer -- it's a Wenzel Pro 50 head with a Ballantyne RSM Model 6 soundhead.

The main problem I'm having is vibrational noise. When I remove the fiber gear that couples the soundhead to the projector head, the soundhead operates silently. Well, that's good. However, with the coupling gear installed, and the motor driving the projector head, something is vibrating loudly.

If I put my finger on the large fiber coupling gear, I can feel the vibration. The soundhead->head gears are all pretty worn. I looked through the Ballantyne parts manuals, and found that at some point, this set of coupling gears had been redesigned -- my projector uses straight gears, and the redesigned gears are helical gears.

Ah, I thought. They must have done that to reduce the vibrations! These gears are very worn, and mesh loosely.

So I have a couple of questions for those familiar with projector repair ...

o Can anyone suggest a method of verifying that this is where the vibration is originating from, or otherwise tracking it down?

o Assuming that I do want to replace the gear chain with helical gears, how expensive would that be? I'd be replacing parts:

RSM 61, 62H, 63H, 64H (27/32" hole), 65 (27/32" shaft).

o Should I also replace the oil bearing parts:

RSM 67, 68, 70, 71, 72, 73

at the same time? They have a fair amount of uneven wear, and leak oil. I would imagine I should, to avoid damaging the new gears.

o There is extensive gear wear throughout the projector head. Just for the sake of completeness, what would be the cost of a new complete set of gears and bearings to do a complete rebuild?

This projector is for my personal use, and will most likely see very light duty. My goal is to have it run reliably and quietly enough that I can run it in the same room as the screen and not need soundproofing. Is this something I'm likely to achieve?

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I've been working on the projector head for quite some time.

At some point, someone had done a really bad repaint job, using non-enamel beige paint applied with a paintbrush.

I did a complete teardown -- dismantled the entire head. I found that straight acetone did a great job of removing the lousy repaint, and all of the grease, without damaging the original baked white enamel. After about three days and a couple hundred Q-tips and cotton balls, I got the mainframe casting cleaned. A repaint was completely unnecessary -- the original enamel is in very good condition -- there are only a small number of dings.

I used acetone to clean and degrease all of the parts. When I dismantled the aperture section, I discovered why the fire shutter wasn't working -- the entire area was packed solid with gummed grease and dirt! I've now rebuilt about half of the machine -- I had to replace the vertical shaft spiral gear, which was broken. Everything seems to be working so far, including the fire shutter, after releasing it from its prison of muck.

I'm about at the point of reinstalling the shutter shaft, and have a choice to make. The shutter shaft spiral gear, Simplex part G-248, is partly damaged. It looks like at some point the shutter shaft either froze, or was locked, and one end of the gear is shattered. A previous owner solved the problem by turning the gear around, but I might as well replace it while I'm rebuilding the mechanism.

The original gear is Formica. I emailed a fellow who has been helping me out with this project, and he has two different types of this gear -- steel and nylon.

On the one hand, the steel gear would be MUCH stronger, and probably last forever. On the other hand, the reason I had to dismantle the entire head was that I accidently stopped the shutter shaft during operation, and the part that was destroyed was the far-more-expensive vertical shaft spiral gear. I'm leaning towards the nylon gear for the simple reason that if the shutter shaft were ever to lock again, I would expect the nylon gear to take the damage.

This model (Wenzel Pro 50) had an engineering change made to it. The original design called for oilite bearings throughout the mechanism. The revision replaced the shutter bearing with a ball-bearing. The engineering change states that this was done to prevent the shutter shaft from locking up. I'm speculating that the shutter gets hot, transmitting heat to the shutter shaft, and into the bearing, causing the oil to harden. Unfortunately, my unit was manufactured just before the engineering change, and I suspect that it's just a wee bit too late to get the replacement parts to "modernize" this head.

A couple of questions --

o Is anyone familiar with the shutter shaft problem on the Wenzel?
o Will a nylon gear quickly wear out?
o I can't get the upgrade parts anymore, can I?
o The Simplex manuals talk about using special high temperature grease on the shutter bearing. However, this head has a regular oilite bearing. Should I lubricate this bearing with regular Simplex oil, or do I need high temperature oil? I don't think that the tube grease would work, because the oil is applied through one of those capped tubes.

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I solved the problem of the noisy transmission gears quite nicely. I replaced the gear train with a sprocket chain. I was able to find a pair of ANSI sprockets that duplicated the gear tooth ratio, and they fit onto the drive shafts without any additional machining or modification. I'll add some pictures later. This modification completely eliminated the vibration from the straight gears, and greatly reduced the noise level. There is still some noise -- but instead of a loud grinding noise, it's a quiet clicking noise as the chain enters and leaves the sprockets. When I'm finished I'm planning to fabricate a cover that should muffle the noise.

I decided not to repaint the mainframe casting, but I am repainting the exterior case and also the shutter. The grey crinkle paint was too far gone -- More than half of the paint flaked off when I cleaned it. I went ahead and stripped all of the casing parts down to bare metal. I briefly considered repainting with crinkle paint, but that would be boring. Instead, I'm using a custom automobile paint system, and the final color is going to be candy purple with white glitter flakes and a glossy clearcoat. This should look really good with the Wenzel logo, which I've polished to a high shine. The main reason for using crinkle paint was probably to disguise the rough castings. Instead, I'm using automobile filler primer and sandpaper to get the castings completely smooth before I apply the base and top coats. I'm applying the paint with an airbrush, driven by a CO2 tank. For the shutter and the inside of the shutter box, I'm using flat black heat-resistant enamel.

I'll get some pictures up soon.

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I read your note. I've torn down and rebuilt the mechanism, and I haven't found anything inferior about it so far. The entire mechanism is quiet running. It has the spiral gear set and fox sprockets. The bearings hold their oil, everything seems to be in good shape. The gears and bearings are unworn to the eye, and the shafts are unworn to the eye and touch. With the exception of the broken G-248 gear that I am in the process of replacing, there is only one component with ANY visible wear on it. That, plus the poor repaint job, leads me to suspect that this projector was rebuilt recently.

Plus, the intermittent has a little LeVezzi plate on it, so they either manufactured or rebuilt it.

If I were to rebuild this projector with LeVezzi parts, it would cost me many times over what I paid for it on eBay. Plus, I can only identify two parts that are candidates for replacement.

I've never worked on a Super Simplex though, so I'll ask -- what specific parts or design features are inferior? The only potential issue that I'm aware of is the rear shutter shaft bearing, which I don't think I can do anything about, but I'd appreciate any specific information on what else to watch out for.

I have seen Wenzel Projectors, but I never ran them. I thought it was a Simplex Regular under a different name.

In 1954, I think the old Empire Theatre on 18th and Marshall Street in Manitowoc, Wisconsin was equipped with them. I went to that theatre every Friday night. Admission was 10 cents. They ran the old Captain Video serials starring Judd Holdren, and some off-the-wall cowboy movies that were only worth a 5 cents at best.

But back to the subject, that theatre was run down and was a true rat-hole equipped with wooden seats and cold stickey floors. There were times I wanted to visit the booth, but the stares leading up to the booth were so rottin' that I was afraid to journey up them.

But those old Wenzels, if that is what they were, just kept grinding away....and never missed a show.

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o New shutter shaft gear installed
o I need to learn how to balance the shutter blade.

I've received a replacement G-248 gear and installed the shutter shaft.
I had the choice of either a steel gear, or a nylon gear. I chose the
nylon gear for two reasons. First, it's supposed to run quieter, and
second, because of an accident where the shutter was stopped during operation, and the impact destroyed a much more expensive gear deeper in the mechanism. This way, if that ever happens again (and I'm taking great care to prevent it), hopefully the less expensive nylon gear will be the one that breaks. At any rate, the new gear and shutter shaft operate smoothly and quietly.

Now the issue of why the shutter stopped during operation in the first place. The shutter blade was heat-warped -- apparently someone let the projector head stop with the lamp burning and the dowser open. Something caught, and it was all over for the vertical shaft spiral gear.

The shutter on a Wenzel Pro is identical to a Super Simplex shutter. I've taken the shutter apart, and flattened the two blade parts -- the main part, and the part that rotates to adjust the light time. I've reassembled the shutter, and it's more or less flat, but not exactly.

This is a problem. I remounted the shutter on the shutter shaft and powered up the projector. This increases the overall vibration of the projector. That's a bad thing. It means that the shutter is unbalanced. I can't run it that way, or it will begin to wear out the shutter shaft oil bearings.

I suppose that I need to replace the warped shutter blade, and rebalance the blade.

My options appear to be to either spend a bunch of money on a new shutter blade, or cut a new one myself out of sheet aluminum, which I'm willing to try (Jigsaw with a hacksaw blade mounted) Either way I will need to carefully balance the shutter blade to keep it from wearing out the bearing. Does anyone have a procedure for doing this or any advice on this part of the project?

Thanks, John

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