A member here on the forum made a comment to the effect that why would a guy who could take a Buick apart to the last nut and bolt, then put it back together again and make it work, why would that guy be afraid of a record changer?
I don't understand 100% how such a Rube Goldberg contraption works, and works dependably. So there is that. I don't know the names of the individual parts, so I still call them "thingies" or "doodads" which, I reckon when you are learning would be acceptable. Repairing changers and restoring cars have a lot in common. The part you don't touch when you work on it the first time will be the first part that fails in service. It comes apart opposite of the way the factory put it together, it goes back together opposite of how you took it apart. Trying to alter that sequence will not work out very well. More is not always better, sometimes less is actually more.
I took a VM 1245 apart three times today because I figured I was the exception to the rule. That surely the rules would apply to others, but not to me. I learned that if you leave the "on-off-rej" knob in "on" you don't stand as great a chance of jamming up the reject lever. That you check all the controls to make sure they move before you stick the changer back into the cabinet. And that you try all three record sizes. I know, I know. The "book" says that if it will drop a 10" record and properly index the tone arm to said 10" record, the other two sizes will be right as well. Not always. If you get lazy and don't clean the 10" and 12" lever thingie doodads, the 10" records may change, the other two sizes won't. I learned this the THIRD time I took the changer back out of the cabinet, turned it over and took it apart AGAIN, to clean those two levers.
I share this with the hope that if there is someone reading this who might be leary of getting into a record changer that they will give it a shot. If you have any mechanical aptitude at all, you can do it. Just sit and look at how it's put together and "get to know it" for a time. Take a part off, then examine what is under it, how it fits. Then keep doing that until there are no more parts left to remove. Then clean everything up, give it a touch of lube as appropriate, then put it all back together. If you put it back together right, it will work. If not, go over your work. For me, the manual was useless. Just a bunch of parts in an exploded view. When something didn't work, what the manual said was never what the problem with my changer was. I had to figure it out for myself. It was fun. I thoroughly enjoyed it, even when the project went south a couple times. Making mistakes is how you learn.
