Many thanks. That's an ingenious bit of lateral thinking there. Oh and we're mostly brits on here, so your spelling is totally correct

Hello all,

Been a while since I posted my clamp adjustment theory, and just in case people are still coming along to this forum to try and fix drive noise, I thought I'd let you know how my wii has been getting on since.

Not good is the answer. I adjusted the clamp, made it quiet for a month or so, and the noise came back, only worse. Opened it up again, shoved foam in there to press down on different areas, again, it worked for a month or so, and then again, back came the noise.

So last night I though enough was enough, time to get it sorted. So I followed "scottnics" solution of putting a dent in the middle of the clamp, as it looked like the nub on the plastic wheel had indeed been worn down. Tapped a screwdriver on the metal clamp as shown, the dent went in quite easily, wasn't even a particularly large one, put the wii back together, and hey presto, I can't even remember it being this quiet.

So anyone who's reading this, get in amongst it, take the clamp off and put a dent in the clamp as shown in scottnics excellent description. Yes, you can get it quiet by using other methods, folded paper inserted here and there, screw adjustments etc, but I firmly believe its ALL down to that plastic nub being worn down.

Good luck and thanks scottnic,

Jim (one happy wii'er again)

hey thanks guys, this was a big help.

I tried adjusting the arms on the hub holder and only made things worse.

I tried the opposite approach of the last poster- instead of dimpling the "hub", I used a glue gun to deposit a very small drop of hot glue to the little nub in the center of the wheel, then I used a pair of nail clippers to clean up the bump, until I could tell that it was the correct height to keep the rim of the wheel from rubbing.

I used soft compound glue, so I suspect I'll have to go back in for another treatment later. If you try this approach yourself, I'd recommend using the harder compound glue.

So far so good, with the glue. I'll let you know how long this lasts.

I guess this is what I get for leaving my wii on for weeks at a time to avoid having to restart from a hard spot

Just go to the website below and buy a new part -

http://www.vgcrepairs.biz/zen_store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1_17&products_id=204

Thanks,

Most helpful. Think I might order one of these

Newcomer to the site and first post!

Thanks to all those especially Madbury and scottnic, for helping me find my own solution to the problem.
I read all your comments and tinkered with applying pressure here and there. I was very wary of bending or dimpling anything tbh!

So here's what I did:

As with scottnics idea of removing the white plastic hub to have a look and see if it was worn, I found mine wasn't?!? So that got me thinking - when I gently press on the disc bracket and thus the hub with the disc spinning, the noise vanished.

So I cut a piece of thin clear stiff plastic from a toy wrapper (it's Christmas!) about the size of a button and sandwiched it back in between the metal bracket and the plastic hub - this has the effect of pushing the hub a little closer than normal and it works! SO FAR! It's only plastic so it shouldn't cause undue wear on the hub and it's smooth enough to not afford too much friction.

Another thought occurred to me: there are four silver screws at the back of the drive housing and one on the left but none on the right! Surely that's bound to cause an imbalance in the pressure applied by the housing on the structure??? There isn't even any space to make your own screw hole and firm this up. So I slipped a wee piece of the same thin clear stiff plastic in the slot at the right hand face to lever it down a bit. There's a slot in the metal with a black plastic screw-hole in it. You'll find the black plastic screw-hole can move about 1mm up or down in this slot, so I wedged the slip in below it, effectively pulling the metal housing down a little further.

Hope that helps and I'll post back in a while as to whether it's a permanent fix.

Nice tip thanks, oh and don't worry we're mostly brits on here. I think I've mislaid my triwing driver which is a bit of a ball arse. Hopefully it will turn to light as I need to open her up again and have another go.

Many thanks to all useful comments. You guys are trying really hard to know what is the problem, and therefore, I'd like to share my thoughts as well as my experiments. I had a defective disc drive for a launch day Wii and happened to have the same annoying buzzing sound along with disc-reading errors. I've tried almost every solution you have mentioned here and many other sites (except for taking out the white disc spinner), but all of them tend to be a temporary fix, so I replaced mine and kept the old one to show everybody my hard work After almost 2 years, the same problem occurred with the latest (it's like OMGWTF!!) It was the newest version and only produce the same annoying sound with some games. I thought it is the beginning of the end like exactly what happened with the old one. Now before opening my Wii for the fifth time, I examined the old drive's disc spinner once again and surprisingly it was in a good condition! So, my last hope is to clean the spinner inside the Wii (without disassembling) just to see what will happen. I put some perfume on the center of Punch Out's disc (where the white spinner grab the disc), half dried it and inserted the disc. After doing it 2-3 times, my LCD TV is now even loader than the Wii!! The noise disappeared completely and tried many games (using perfume on the center) to check whether they produce the same noise as before, but gladly this was a good idea! My idea was to remove the thumbs/dirt somehow from the discs' center and clean the white spinner inside as well. I know the solution I posted seems crazy, but this was my only thing imaginable after 3 years of research. If the solution I posted seems be a temporary, I'll post again to let you know, but so far so good! By the way, my perfume was GUCCI and I don't know if it makes any difference or no LOL.. Sorry for bad English/grammar mistakes..

Not at all,

Your solution does make some sense to me. The alcohol in the perfume could cut through any grease and grime on the disk spinner and give it a bit of a clean. That might be all that's needed in your case because the problem as you've described sounds progressive. I suspect as a result of dirt and grease build up on the spinner itself, which in turn has forced it fractionally out of its correct possition.

I wouldn't imagine the brand of purfume makes a difference so long as it uses an alcohol as it's base. Alternatively you could get some isopropyl(sp?) alcohol from an electronics outlet, which would probably do the same job at a fraction of the price.

I've had a couple of Wii drive problems:

- on one a disk had been rammed in too hard, and knocked the white plastic gear rail off it's runner. More accurately, jammed it which meant the teeth were worn down as it tried to receive disks. Took the gear train apart, and lifted the rail with some insulating tape so that the teeth meshed properly to fix that.

- on another, the stepper motor is getting really noisy. I haven't opened this one yet - disk insert and spinning is fine, nut makes an almost-rattling noise when the lens moves. Is that a known problem? Sounds different to everything else in here.

@ Madbury: The part you mentioned about the spinner's correct position might not be the problem as well because many people said that their spinners are OK as my old drive was, but they still have the same problem. Also, if you use your Wii vertically or horizontally doesn't make any difference in the noise, not even a slight change in the grinding noise! My thought was that the spinner is not grabbing the disc firmly and hold it against the black motor. Anyway, yeah, it's just another point of view. It's not that I couldn't buy a new drive, but this is really annoying and it keeps chasing me whenever I use my Wii. The worst is that there is no official statement from Nintendo regarding this issue nor anybody seems to care about it

Well my fix worked until my nephew jammed 2 discs in at the same time and since then it's been on & off like a yoyo!
I'm gonna wait until he's grown up and got a Playstation 7 then I'll spill my cocoa in it!

LOL

I've come to accept that kids break stuff and it's impossible to be mad with them when they do.