# Cleaning muddy vhs.... **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 14, 2018, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cleaning-muddy-vhs/806624 "2018-01-14T20:03:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![AngelSoft](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/angelsoft/32/440_2.png) [@AngelSoft](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AngelSoft)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2018, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cleaning-muddy-vhs/806624/1 "2018-01-14T20:03:31Z")
So my daughter found a couple of unlabeled, mud filled vhs tapes in a creek. Being the curious sort, I’d love to know what’s on them. A quick Google gave me two conflicting tips about cleaning vhs tapes. One says absolutely don’t open them but the other says to do so and clean the reels by hand. Anyone have personal experience with this to give some tips? Thanks! Sent from my VS987 using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2018, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cleaning-muddy-vhs/806624/2 "2018-01-14T20:18:48Z")
Forget it. They’re goners. Even after a decent cleaning the chances of the tapes harming your VCR are very high and the chances of getting anything interesting off them is tiny. And cleaning would absolutely, positively involve taking the cassette apart and gently hand washing the unspooled tapes. That’s **811** feet for a T-120 tape. You have to be really compulsive to want to deal with unspooling, cleaning, drying and spooling all that. ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2018, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cleaning-muddy-vhs/806624/3 "2018-01-14T20:21:51Z")
You still have a vcr player? Wow!! Come to think of it, I probably do too, somewhere… ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2018, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cleaning-muddy-vhs/806624/4 "2018-01-14T20:25:34Z")
Opening a VHS cartridge is easy. Closing it back up is more of a challenge. There are springs coiled up inside the cartridge that will release when you open it. Getting them aligned right so you can close the case back properly is difficult (but not impossible). ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2018, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cleaning-muddy-vhs/806624/5 "2018-01-14T20:45:49Z")
Is there any possibility that you could immerse the tapes in room-temperature water and rinse the mud off of them? If so, and if you can dry them without incurring mold growth, you might be able to read them. You may have to sacrifice a VCR to this project, due to the residual mud and debris. If the tapes are of commercial video, or from TV shows, it might not be worth it. It depends on how curious you are, how much of a gamble you want to take, and how much time and cost you are willing to throw away. Buying a sacrificial VCR on eBay might be your best option right now. Opening and closing a cassette isn’t that hard, in spite of what **Little Nemo** says. For that matter, you can discard the springs and interlocks entirely and the cassette will play just fine. I’d say cleaning & drying the insides is most important right now. ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2018, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cleaning-muddy-vhs/806624/6 "2018-01-14T21:06:04Z")
I’ll save you the trouble. It’s porn. ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2018, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cleaning-muddy-vhs/806624/7 "2018-01-14T21:54:22Z")
Or worse, homemade porn. Aaaccckk! ---
**Author:** ![snfaulkner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snfaulkner/32/433_2.png) [@snfaulkner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snfaulkner)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2018, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cleaning-muddy-vhs/806624/8 "2018-01-14T22:25:45Z")
7 days ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2018, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cleaning-muddy-vhs/806624/9 "2018-01-14T22:42:21Z")
How about getting a professional photographer or someone to see what they can do, or have them reccomend someone? I’d never attempt something like that myself. ---
**Author:** ![Majestic\_Lee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Majestic\_Lee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Majestic_Lee)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2018, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cleaning-muddy-vhs/806624/10 "2018-01-14T23:17:07Z")
Almost certainly blank or they’ll have old Rockford Files or some similar vintage program on. And they’ll probably damage your VCR player. Not worth the candle as they say… ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2018, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cleaning-muddy-vhs/806624/11 "2018-01-15T01:19:24Z")
My advice? Don’t bother. Even if you could get them clean, chances are you wouldn’t want to see what’s on them anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2018, 7:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cleaning-muddy-vhs/806624/12 "2018-01-15T07:50:08Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > Forget it. They’re goners. Even after a decent cleaning the chances of the tapes harming your VCR are very high and the chances of getting anything interesting off them is tiny. > > And cleaning would absolutely, positively involve taking the cassette apart and gently hand washing the unspooled tapes. That’s **811** feet for a T-120 tape. You have to be really compulsive to want to deal with unspooling, cleaning, drying and spooling all that. I agree - the only sort of treatment that has a decent chance of working would be the sort of cleaning that a national security agency would undertake if they believed the tapes contained some vital evidence of something - lots of space and equipment to carefully unwind the tapes without causing further damage, very gentle cleaning, possibly with specialist materials, then re-spooling into something for playback (but that might not be a cassette body) ---
**Author:** ![kopek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kopek/32/337_2.png) [@kopek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kopek)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2018, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cleaning-muddy-vhs/806624/13 "2018-01-15T16:05:03Z")
My advice is also not to bother. That being said though ---- I have a couple old VCRs laying around and probably would blow the time and effort myself. Curiosity is just _that_ strong of a force. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2018, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cleaning-muddy-vhs/806624/14 "2018-01-16T03:18:20Z")
> [@kopek](#): > > My advice is also not to bother. That being said though ---- I have a couple old VCRs laying around and probably would blow the time and effort myself. Curiosity is just _that_ strong of a force. As a result of that philosophy, I have a cat that has only 8 lives left. ---
**Author:** ![mr\_horsepower](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/eb8c5e/32.png) [@mr\_horsepower](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mr_horsepower)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cleaning-muddy-vhs/806624/15 "2018-01-17T17:05:34Z")
first take apart a spare vhs tape that you don’t want anymore that’s clean so you’ll know what’s there and how they operate. take the spools & tape out too. set them aside. next take apart the other (muddy) one. take out the spools with the tape attached. inspect the tapes general condition. if a large part of it looks clean enough, and if the guts are the same, put the spools/tape into the clean housing. (the guts will of course be the same in function but there’s perhaps some differences brand to brand that could make this not be 100% seamless.) if you can’t just do a complete install, but there’s some tape that looks ok in the spooled area, remove tape off the first spool at least even to what you’re going to splice back onto it from the tape you found. splice it into the reel of the 1st tapes reel at the very front of the tape. you’ll need scissors, scotch tape and clean hands. put it back together and try it out. your little splice may give you some idea as to what’s on the rest of the tape, it’d of course be impossible to say though. I’ve had to fix screwed up tapes a long time ago doing this. i know it can work. the question is is the tape you’re wanting to view screwed up. since it got found in the mud, my guess is it’s a ‘dirty’ movie. ---
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cleaning-muddy-vhs/806624/16 "2018-01-17T17:28:09Z")
> [@mr\_horsepower](#): > > first take apart a spare vhs tape that you don’t want anymore that’s clean so you’ll know what’s there and how they operate. take the spools & tape out too… Brilliant! There is almost no chance the section of tape that has remained spooled has grit in it (although it may have gotten sticky). The tape could still foul the heads in your VCR, but you might be surprised at just how useful a simple pencil eraser can be for rehabilitating nasty VCR heads. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cleaning-muddy-vhs/806624/17 "2018-01-17T17:31:32Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > As a result of that philosophy, I have a cat that has only 8 lives left. How many weeks old is this remarkable cat that still has 8 lives? ---
**Author:** ![kopek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kopek/32/337_2.png) [@kopek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kopek)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2018, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cleaning-muddy-vhs/806624/18 "2018-01-18T04:57:39Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > As a result of that philosophy, I have a cat that has only 8 lives left. My doctor says I’ve already used up 6 lives. I’ve told her that two more and I am going to find a new doctor so I can start over with a fresh bank. She is a personal friend but there are still times she says she hates me. 😉