Fairlight-CMI

Hi Kirk. I have just had the "pleasure" of fixing 7 x 8" floppy drives this afternoon, so may have some insights into your specific problem. First of all, there were several types of floppy drive used in the in I, II, IIX family. 
The earliest were full width, beige drives that had a mains motor. Since these are region specific, and weigh as much as a couple of bricks, I replace these with later drives at the earliest convenience. 
The two types of later half width drives are black, and easily identified by the fact they either have a round, or rectangular LED. Most IIXs were shipped with the YE-Data round LED drives, and these in my experience have the most problems. Basically, all the problems I've found on these are mechanical, and are easily fixed if you have a practical mind.  
The specific problem you describe I've fixed many times today. It's caused by a synthetic rubber "stop" on the eject mechanism, whereby the material has degraded into something like road tar. Because of this, the eject slide gets bunged up, and is reluctant to open. You may be fortunate in the fact that yours is the right-hand drive, and is therefore easier to get to. If you remove the right-hand beige ali cover (4 x screws), you can see it straight away. Just try to insert and remove discs, and you'll hopefully see what I mean. Any sluggishness will probably be caused by a big lump of goo fouling the slide. Just remove all the goo, clean up, and spread a bit of graphite grease around. Works wonders.
The other major problem I found, was the drives not accessing floppies properly (error messages: system disc faulty). I traced this to the pull-in solenoid, which again was gummed up. Again, there were synthetic rubber stops that had turned to bitumen, stopping the solenoid from moving freely.
I'll post some pictures when I have a moment.
Lastly, this was all made much easier by making some flying leads from my IIX, to be able to see the drives operating on a benchtop.  There's no way you can see what's going on with the drives in the machine.
Hope this is helpful,

Regards,

Peter Wielk

Horizontal Productions in rainy Sydney