Ziggi's World

There are two gears in the picture below marked loading gear and thread gear. The loading gear operates the loading carriage to bring the tape into the VCR. (Note the loading gear in the picture has had the top cover removed to better see it and will have some sort of cover over it. Some machines will have a large cover over the gear and some will only have a small ring to hold the loading belt on). The thread gear threads the tape around the video head assembly and capstan. To remove the tape without power first you must unthread the tape by turning the thread gear clockwise looking at it from the top of the VCR. Once the threading assembly is in the completely unthreaded position as shown in the picture it is time to unload the tape from the VCR. Move the lever shown in the picture to release the loading gear and hold it there while turning the loading gear clockwise until the tape lifts up and ejects from the VCR. The door on the tape itself must close to fully eject the tape from the VCR so you must be carefull that the door doesn't damage the tape since there will be tape hanging out from the unthreading process. Once the tape has been removed from the VCR look at the bottom of the cassette on the right front side of it and you will see a small lever to release the cassette door so you can then open the door and just turn the tape spindle on the bottom of the cassette to bring the tape back into the cassette.