Sticky 360 Spindle

dunno if this is in the right section..
i was getting the open tray disc error on my 360 and the spindle motor (spins the DVD) seems to be kinda sticky. i've tried cleaning it, oiling it, ect.. but i cannot get it to spin smoothly.

I was wondering if anyone knew a site i could buy one of these, ive looked all over the net and cannot seem to find one. The drive is a toshiba samsung. im looking to replace the spindle not the drive itself but if you cannot buy these then i guess ill just have to buy a replacement drive.

Your best bet would be to try to find a drive from the same manufacturer and dissect it. Replacing the 360 drive is a PITA because it has firmware in it that the 360 checks for hacks and if the serials of the console and the 360 don't match up then you and your console will get banned from Xbox LIVE.

You need to move the drive's PCB board to the new drive in order to keep this from happening.

Here are the instructions:
http://www.llamma.com/xbox360/repair/samsung-disassembly.htm

If the serial on the console and mobo don't match up, you can't even play game to begin with. If you know what you are doing then just extract the firmware from original drive, flash it onto the new drive and put it back and it should work.

yeah i know, i switched it with my friends drive and it wouldnt play the game but when we replaced the spindle with his it worked fine, thats why i was asking if there was any place i could buy one.

if there isnt one im just going to buy another drive and swap the spindles probably

Reviving this thread for a few quick questions.. I'll start off by saying that switching the spindles from the new drive I ordered to the old drive was a BAD idea. I don't know if the laser was scratched on the old drive or what but every time I would try to load certain parts of a game it would crash.

For example, me and my room mate rented L4D and we couldn't get hardly any of the levels to work (CD was clean/unscratched). And if it DID work we could play the level...but no zombies would spawn!! A similar thing would happen with Assassins Creed, whenever i would try to zone into Damascus I got an error saying the CD was scratched (when it was brand new)

However, we could play Gears of War and Fear 2 fine with the exception of some hiccups (error would pop up saying that the disc was scratched or there would be major texture issues when loading a new area).

So my first question is where can i buy a 360 tool kit at a local store.. I really don't feel like waiting on shipping and such to get one, I would just rather go out and buy it physically.

And my second question is will switching out the PCB board actually work?

All I need to do is open my case up, get out the working spindle (in the old drive atm), put the working spindle back into the new drive, take my PCB board out of my old drive, and then put the the old PCB board into the new one. Will this work? Or will I have to add any extra steps.

BUMP. Could use some advice

Of all the time and efforts you put into this, might as well replace the whole drive. Its not that hard to extract the firmware and flash it onto the new drive, you just have to google a bit to get the tutorial. That or get some ebay service to do it for you.

WOOT, I finally think it's fixed. It's loading everything properly and I haven't gotten any disc read errors

how did you endup fixing it?? if its one of the old hitachi and samsung drives you should try adjusting the pot

do a search at xbox-scene.com for adjusting the pot they have a pretty good tut there

xtkxhom3r said:

how did you endup fixing it?? if its one of the old hitachi and samsung drives you should try adjusting the pot

Click to expand...

Who can be bothered? Just smoke it.

I had previously bought another Hitachi Samsung drive and decided to just switch the PCB boards like fudge said awhile back. I think the reason it wasn't loading properly was because the discs used to scratch up against the laser, damaging it. But now that I have a completely new drive (minus the PCB board) everything is running perfect....so far, lol.

Now all I need is a hard drive...they are so damn expensive though!! I've seen a used one at gamestop for $50...and that's a 20 gig. $100 for a 60 gig is quite ridiculous imo. AND to top it off I don't have a physical internet connection in my room so I can't really get Xbox Live unless I by a wireless adapter which are also expensive as hell.

Edit: Also these things run hot as hell, I'm thinking about adding a new fan on it.

jaredavidporter said:

I had previously bought another Hitachi Samsung drive and decided to just switch the PCB boards like fudge said awhile back. I think the reason it wasn't loading properly was because the discs used to scratch up against the laser, damaging it. But now that I have a completely new drive (minus the PCB board) everything is running perfect....so far, lol.

Now all I need is a hard drive...they are so damn expensive though!! I've seen a used one at gamestop for $50...and that's a 20 gig. $100 for a 60 gig is quite ridiculous imo. AND to top it off I don't have a physical internet connection in my room so I can't really get Xbox Live unless I by a wireless adapter which are also expensive as hell.

Edit: Also these things run hot as hell, I'm thinking about adding a new fan on it.

Click to expand...

Since you've already opened it up, it wouldn't hurt to add a GPU fan in there. I'd just 3M it to the top of the GPU heatsink. There are a few more mods out there that may help with cooling. Check them out at http://www.llamma.com/xbox360/

ebay 120 gig hdd + enclosure = 70 bux

DBZ said:

ebay 120 gig hdd + enclosure = 70 bux

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I searched it up on Ebay and nothing came up. I thought the biggest 360 drives they have are 60 gig?