problems with Kennedy tape drive hubs

[Charles Hedrick]

We have a Kennedy 9400 (tridensity) tape drive.  The drive is
generally quite good, except for the supply reel hub.  Every week
or two the tape starts slipping.  There is an adjustment to 
tighten it, but there are limits to how much this can do.  Our
CE tells us that there is a casting inside the hub that sort
of crumbles, and that this hub is inevitably going to continue
being a problem in any operation that uses the drive as heavily
as we do.  (We are not a production DP shop.  We just use it for
backups.  But apparently we do more of them than some places.)
It seems that we are not alone in this problem.  Does anyone
know of a solution?  What I'd love to do is replace the hub
with one of the sort used by DEC.  Does anyone know whether this
is feasible?