The PHILCO Phorum

Tonight I began work on a radio which has been sitting around waiting for me to start work on it since before I moved from Rhode Island, a Philco Model 89-123. The cabinet is in very nice shape, and should clean up very well with the usual GOJO treatment and then some wax. The radio itself has not had much work done. It appears that one of the filter condensers was bypassed back years ago, and some tubes were replaced. Other than that it seems unmolested. There were no signs of the power transformer overheating, and there are no visible signs of corrosion, so I'll keep my fingers crossed that this will be a straightforward restoration. Here are some "before" pictures.

Hello Mike,
looks like a great project this next week I have off and I am thinking of diving into my Philco 38-10 and that cabinet of your looks like it will clean up nicely .
The radio that I am working on is my 51-930 chassis is done I just need to clean up the cabinet and polish it .

Mike that chassis looks in fairly nice shape I can't wait to see your progress !

Sincerely Richard

Thanks, Richard,
If you're going to be working on a 38-10 take a look at my own thread from when I restored that model
https://philcoradio.com/phorum/showthread.php?tid=22318
And just for fun you might enjoy my thread about the evolution of a design, model 66 to 37-61 to 38-10
https://philcoradio.com/phorum/showthread.php?tid=23682
I'll look forward to watching your progress on that radio too.

Good luck, Mike

Mike,

I'm assuming you will probably run into the dreaded oscillator/IF coil issues of open windings on this restoration, but I hope not...fingers crossed!

Those Bullet style sets have a certain something, neat design. I had a Stewart Warner that had that type of a case, did not keep it but looked better than it played......good luck all. I only have 1 Philco Cathredral set....what every layman thinks of when somebody sez "Old Radio".

Paul

Never thought of that style as "Bullet", Paul, but I see it now-
Simon

Well, this is going to be interesting, and less straight forward than most of my restorations. I began by trying to figure out the bakelite block condensers. I looked in the library, and found a little help. It would be nice if it had diagrams for each block listing what was connected to what exactly, but, I guess I will have to figure that out by tracing the schematic. Then there is the schematic. My chassis has a bakelite block up at the top right of the picture below that is NOT inn the parts diagram.

Tonight I printed out the changes for the model from the Library, and printed an enlarged schematic, and will begin showing the various changes on that schematic, then try to make sense of the bakelite blocks and what, exactly, goes to what. On top of all that, the underside of the chassis is a blivit, you know, a blivit, 10 pounds of,,, er... stuffed into a 5 pound sack. Philco seems to have had a habit of doing this, where RCA usually kept more space to work under there. Even Crosley was not as bad.

Hello mike,
yes, I agree Philco loved making their under chassis look like a mess room way to busy under there and I do have a Philco chassis that I need to finish up that has been sitting in a box .
I made a mistake and painted the chassis and te results just does not look right so I just have not done anything to it since I think mine is a model 60 or 80 I forget now.

Sincerely Richard

First, for those who want to follow along, here is the link to the schematic and original parts list (before changes) from this site's library:  https://philcoradio.com/library/download...l.%201.pdf

Tonight I began to work on the bakelite blocks. The first two I tackled were the one which is not shown in the diagram, but which you can see in the picture in the top right corner. Once removed from the circuitry it proved to be a 3615-L, a simple .09 MFD condenser between the lug and the ground through the mounting screw. The other, number 17 in the parts diagram, is a 4989-AG, with 2  .09 MFD condensers in parallel between lug 1 and lug 3, and a 300 ohm resistor between lug 1 and lug 2. As is my usual procedure, I made a little tray from aluminum foil, and little supports from aluminum foil, and let the blocks sit in the oven at 350 F until the tar had melted out of them, then pulled the guts out with a pair of long nosed pliers. I will replace the single .09 MFD condenser in the 3615-L with a .1 MFD, and the 2 .09 MFD condensers in parallel with a .22 MFD, and the 300 ohm resistor with a 1/2 watt modern one. Then I'll put them back and reconnect them, and go on to others.