Hello,
I have a Naim Unitilite. I hope someone can help me with a problem. The CD drawer would not open properly, due to wear on the rubber drive belt, a problem which has been addressed several times in this forum. I replaced the belt in the way mentioned in the forum, i.e. with the drawer open and putting a new belt onto the pulleys, expecting this to resolve the problem easily. Unfortunately, it didn’t resolve the problem: I’m not sure, but maybe the belt slipped off the pulley. Now the CD drawer won’t open at all, and I cannot open it manually. I managed to remove the Unitilite cover and get at the CD unit inside, but I still cannot open the drawer and so I cannot access the pulleys to replace the rubber belt. Does anyone know how I can get the CD drawer open in this situation?
You can actually just pull the drawer out manually by hooking something behind the front edge of the drawer and pulling. The front of the CD drive hinges down and you can then pull the actual drawer out. As you have found, taking the top off the Unitilite and/or the CD drive doesn’t help even the tiniest bit.
The belt has to be pretty tight. If it has fallen off then it’s much too loose, but you should be able to recover the situation.
The Naim fix is to replace the whole CD drive because (as told to us before by @NeilS) they found replacing only the belt doesn’t always last that long.
But it will cost you a lot of money to get Naim to repair the unit, almost as much as it is worth secondhand working properly, and belts are only pennies each. Once you know what you are doing replacing the belt takes about ten seconds and you don’t need to move the Unitilite from where it normally lives.
You can also try a temporary fix by putting the belt into boiling water for a few seconds.
Regards
Neil.
Thanks a lot, that has worked. I’ve fitted a tighter rubber belt and the drawer seems ok now.
Excellent! I’m glad that worked out for you.