As suggest here here by (someone I forget, can't find the thread again, a very helpful person) I bought a new M- Holder and gears for this player to fix a problem where the beginning of side B would always skip about 10 seconds at the beginning.

Sure enough, the M Holder was in fact broken. That guy who's name I forget sure knows his stuff! I put everything back together and the problem is gone.

Now I have a new problem, a much worse one. The player will only play the first two minutes or so before getting stuck in a loop. It will just skip back a few seconds over and over again. If I skip ahead a few chapters it never finds the signal and just hangs. If I skip to side B it will hang quite a while before it starts playing, then it will play fine for about the same length of time (aprox 2 min) and have the same issue.

Its almost like there is a physical problem preventing the laser from moving, but obviously that's not exactly the issue because it can move straight through the blockage and onto the other side. I'm fairly certain all the pieces went back into their correct place but...maybe not?

This comes at an inconvenient time since I'm preparing to pack up my LD-W1 and ship it to Duncan at Bayview which will leave me without a decent player now that I've messed this one up.

Any ideas?

Perhaps a "burr" on one of the two gears that fits onto the M holder. Or a problem at the worm gear on the drive motor shaft (I've seen this a lot). Remember, when searching or changing sides the motor and gears are turning much faster than they are during normal play...