Repairing a drive belt of a Yamaha CDC 665 5 cd-changer
- The Most Versatile HandyMan
- Oct 5, 2022
- 2 min read
Updated: May 11, 2023
The disc tray of this cd player was having some trouble closing. A small little push at the start would get the tray past the initial inertia and it would close completely and it just starts playing. I suspected that this was due to a worn drive belt but as it wasn't really impacting the usage of the cd-player I didn't feel much like repairing it at the time. We did use the cd-player with this fault for quite some time.
Later on though, the player didn't start playing anymore. I had the feeling that the player mechanism wasn't engaging the cd anymore. I wasn't sure what would be the cause of this issue so I opened up the cd-player.
After a first inspection I found that the belt for the cd-tray was slipping as expected. I didn't find any other problems though. So I decided to start with replacing that belt and see what the result would be.
The drive belt has part number VQ776900 in the parts catalog (link below) and after some research I found that it is a square 1,5mm thick 38mm diameter belt. I didn't have any available and wanted to test the player so I looked for a rubber band of similar (a little smaller) dimensions in our kitchen.
I installed the rubber band on the player and.... it worked again perfectly!
I didn't expect a simple kitchen rubber band was going to have the same characteristics as a drive belt so I was sure it wasn't going to last 21 years as the original did but still I was curious how long it would last...
Well, all this happened about 1 year and 4 months ago.
The tray quite quickly started having troubles closing again and as of lately, the player didn't want to play anymore.
I was sure the problem was the drive belt and I didn't just want to replace it by a rubber band again and have the same issue anew in a year.
All of the replacement belt sets I found on the net were 1,2mm thick and not the required 1,5mm. Probably a replacement belt of 1,2mm would also do the job but I thought, if it will give me again 21 years of joy, better go for a 1,5mm belt.
I found a 1,5mm replacement belt on north.pl and after receiving it, it appeared to be an original Yamaha belt.
When comparing the old (on top) and new one it seems the old one got a little stretched over the years.
Opening the player up showed that indeed the rubber band was slipping. I replaced it with the ordered original belt and all is functioning perfectly again.
The rubber band was not discarded but returned to its colleagues in the kitchen. :-)
To conclude: original drive belt: 21 years. rubber band: 1,3 years !
Next update to this post is expected in 2043!
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