Is the floating suspension fully free? By that I mean are all three floating suspension locking screws completely disengaged?

If they are then I would check the subplatter and make sure it isn't rubbing against something. By your description it has to be something related to the platter rotation.

The platter breaking on the Beogram 800x is electronic so if that is somehow a culprit then the fix there is electrical.

-sonavor

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have found out that the Beogram 8002 doesn't use a conventional motor with bearings and a shaft.  It has a tangential drive system.

The base platter as shown in the first picture is actually the rotor in the system. 

The transformer looking thing that the rotor circulates around is the stator, so the motor doesn't have any moving parts, clever :-)

NB the base platter (rotor)  can be removed as shown in the second photo, you see the circular compartment for the main bearing, to remove it you loosen the screw that holds the sensor assembly (this sensor reads the tacho disc) and then carefully rotate the arm away clockwise

yes, it is fully free, and subplatter spinning fine, the repeatable nature of the noise does point to platter rotation, let me look at that first

In the photo with the subplatter off you can see your hub unit. The device next to it is a photo sensor that reads the tacho disk.  While you have the subplatter off can you manually (do not run the Beogram 800x turntable with the subplatter removed) rotate that hub and see if anything is hitting? The tachodisk should pass through the sensor without any contact.

-sonavor

Hi John, yes it turns around without any issues, but does not spin as fast as I used to remember, is that a concern do you think, can anything be done to make it spin a little more freely ?

That center hub should spin very easily. Perhaps something is gunked up inside the bearing tube that the center hub shaft fits in. The Beogram 800x Lubrication Chart says for the Turntable Bearing: M4 Oil (modern synthetic is fine) applied to the shaft point and streaked along the length of the shaft. That is sufficient.

You might check out

If the center hub bearing inlay (white nylon part at the bottom) is very worn (or broken - I have seen that), the hub
rides too low and binds inside the bearing.

Martin

its spinning very freely now after I added a little 0.4mm circular shim as per Beolovers blog post, even though I could not hear that my sub platter was scraping, using the shim has allowed me to spin the platter very freely - there is no drag now and it carries on spinning for a long time

sadly the noise is still there in the background, a sort of clunk every second, I will try and record it and put on youtube

so this is a quick recording between two tracks, it sounds a bit like your window wipers in the car, hard to describe having a hard time trying to pinpoint where it is coming from, it could still be something not right with the platter

7 second You Tube Clip