Just picked up a 1936 Philco 116B Tombstone Radio Today and need some info on it - Printable Version
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+--- Thread: Just picked up a 1936 Philco 116B Tombstone Radio Today and need some info on it (/showthread.php?tid=20708)
RE: Just picked up a 1936 Philco 116B Tombstone Radio Today and need some info on it - captainclock1988 - 01-03-2020
Quote:To get the braid unsolder from the bolts this works well: https://www.ebay.com/itm/WELLER-Solderin...SwDoNeBPYp It's mis listed here as it's one of the older 325w units and is better than the newer 260 watt. Might need a tip. [Image: https://philcoradio.com/phorum/images/smilies/icon_cool.gif]
Most of the time the rubber grommets under the tuning cap are shot making the cap wobble and cause the tuning shaft to rub on the cabinet. The fix is to unsolder the braid, remove the 1/4"hex screws and replace the grommets.
My dad actually has one of those already, but the case is broken on it and is being held together with industrial zipties (my dad works at an RV Factory where he can get industrial Zipties by the boxload).
I might see if I can Borrow my dad's Soldering Gun.
Weller is actually still in business to this day, Still Made in America.
Do you know how I can go about replacing #23? Its very ackwardly situated in the chassis and very hard to get to and it doesn't have much leeway to move.
RE: Just picked up a 1936 Philco 116B Tombstone Radio Today and need some info on it - Radioroslyn - 01-03-2020
I don't remember that cap being a difficult one to remove. You do have two thing against you. Where it's soldered to the chassis will require a large iron to undo it and where it's soldered to the bandswitch those connections can be somewhat delicate so you don't want to apply any force to remove the wire from the joint. So the simplest thing to do is to cut the wires off of the cap and slide it out between the wires. Fortunately the replacement is smaller will clear the existing parts easily.
RE: Just picked up a 1936 Philco 116B Tombstone Radio Today and need some info on it - captainclock1988 - 01-03-2020
Quote:I don't remember that cap being a difficult one to remove. You do have two thing against you. Where it's soldered to the chassis will require a large iron to undo it and where it's soldered to the bandswitch those connections can be somewhat delicate so you don't want to apply any force to remove the wire from the joint. So the simplest thing to do is to cut the wires off of the cap and slide it out between the wires. Fortunately the replacement is smaller will clear the existing parts easily.
Well that one I am having problems with because my nippers I have are too big to fit in between those band switch wafers to cut that old capacitor out.
RE: Just picked up a 1936 Philco 116B Tombstone Radio Today and need some info on it - mornflt - 01-06-2020
I have made the same mistake. Now what I do is to use a mild dish soap well diluted in water. The trick is to find the small lettering and or number which identifies the dial, write the number down for further reference and then lightly wipe over this part of the dial. If this does not remove the lettering, it is generally safe to use this method to clean the rest of the dial. I also understand that mineral spirits can be used as well.
RE: Just picked up a 1936 Philco 116B Tombstone Radio Today and need some info on it - captainclock1988 - 01-06-2020
OK So this radio seems to have 2 antenna connections and I'm not sure which antenna connections are for which bandspreads, it has a set of Fahntock clips on top of the chassis marked ANT. and GND. and then a set of screw terminals on the back of the chassis next to the speaker jack marked RED and BLK, and I can't find any information anywhere as to which antenna connection goes to which band, all I can find is something about a Philco "All-Wave Aerial" and that's it, I can't even find anything about how that antenna worked with this radio and the built in antenna switch circuitry, or how it was supposed to be connected to the radio (or how a wire type aerial could be hooked up to this radio for that matter).
Anyone here have access to the info I need for the antenna wiring information for this radio that I need?
Also on the SW Bandspreads and the Police and Amateur Radio Band Spreads I seem to get a weird Oscillation noise that has a steady "beat" to it and I can't get that noise to go away.
Any ideas as to what that noise could be and how I can go about getting rid of it?
RE: Just picked up a 1936 Philco 116B Tombstone Radio Today and need some info on it - Radioroslyn - 01-06-2020
The ant and gnd posts on the back of the chassis are designed for a single wire (aka random wire ant) and a connection to a ground. The red and black are designed for a balanced antenna using 300 ohm feed line and two element connected off the far end of the feed line. The length of the elements will determine the frequency that the ant will receive the best.
Look up dipole ant and where it uses coax use 300 ohm twin lead. There will be a formula of two to determine the lengths. Balanced antennas are better as they improve the signal to noise ratio.
>Oscillation noise that has a steady "beat" to it and I can't get that noise to go away.
Any ideas as to what that noise could be and how I can go about getting rid of it?
Hard to say so many choices. Could be a modern device causing interference, misalignment, missing tube shield, ect... I would w/the set warmed up and oscillating go thru and touch the grid caps one by one of the rf and if stages and see if it stops oscillating if so then that's the stage to have a look at.
RE: Just picked up a 1936 Philco 116B Tombstone Radio Today and need some info on it - captainclock1988 - 01-07-2020
I made a video of the sound this radio makes in the Shortwave and police/amateur radio bands, which is posted below.
But I think I figured out the problem, first of all the radio doesn't have a 37 (or 76) tube in the 2nd Det./AVC socket like its supposed to, and second the 78 tube that was in this radio originally fof the RF stage was faulty I think because when I went to try and remove it to check the capacitor that comes off the grid cap of the 77 tube the 78 tube's bulb broke right off the base (the bulb itself didn't break but the bulb came unglued from the base and the wires for the tube's connections inside the bulb pulled straight out of the pins in the base) which when that happend I had to pry the base out of the socket because the base was actually stuck in the socket for some reason (I think someone may have stuck the tube into the socket wrong), so I stuck a 6D6 tube I had laying around from an old Delco radio I used to have from 1937 and the noise went away but the audio is now a bit quieter than it was with the 78 tube in there (but the tube substitution manual did say that the radio was going to need a realignment when using a 6D6 tube in place of a 78 tube).
When I put my finger on the grid cap of the RF tube the audio gets louder and the reception clears up significantly, when I touch the grid cap of the 77 Tube (the 1st Detector Tube) the audio gets quieter and then when I touch the grid cap of the 77 tube and wave my hand over the 84/6Z4 tube I get severe feedback (which is why I think that 84/6Z4 tube shouldn't be there, also when I went to try and swap out the 76 oscillator tube with the 84/6Z4 tube the radio was completely dead audio wise, which is the other reason why I don't think that the 84/6Z4 tube doesn't belong in that spot) and the 1st and 2nd IF tube grid caps when touched make the radio go silent.
Also the radio is missing 3 of its tube shields (one for the 76 Oscillator tube, one for the 77 1st Detector tube and one for the 77 1st Audio Tube, the rest are still there), which I think that this radio missing 3 of its six tube shields might also be contributing to the odd oscillating noise I'm hearing in this radio.
That's what I have figured out with this radio so far.
Philco Radio Video
RE: Just picked up a 1936 Philco 116B Tombstone Radio Today and need some info on it - Radioroslyn - 01-07-2020
Loose the 84 and the 6D6. The 84 has no business in the set. Swapping it for the 76 is a BAD idea. The 77 and 78 do have the same pinout as the 6C6 and 6D6 but do not make good replacements for each other. They tend to oscillate and are hard the stabilize. Stick with the intended tubes.
RE: Just picked up a 1936 Philco 116B Tombstone Radio Today and need some info on it - captainclock1988 - 01-07-2020
Quote:Loose the 84 and the 6D6. The 84 has no business in the set. Swapping it for the 76 is a BAD idea. The 77 and 78 do have the same pinout as the 6C6 and 6D6 but do not make good replacements for each other. They tend to oscillate and are hard the stabilize. Stick with the intended tubes.
Well the 78 tube broke on me so it looks like I'm just going to have to order a new 78 tube, unless you have a spare 78 tube that you could send me?
As for the 84 tube, that was the tube that was in the set when I got it, and I was actually saying that it shouldn't of been in there but some people were saying it would be fine to leave in until I got the proper tube in (which I should be getting a good used 37 and 76 by tomorrow (the person I'm getting them from sent them out yesterday), so then all I would need would be a 78 tube.
Also I need some correct tube shields for this set, I looked at eBay and all they had were the square shaped tube shields which is what the later model 116s used, whereas mine is an early model 116 which used the rounded style tube shields.
Anyone have any extra Philco rounded tube shields for the 116B that they could send me?
Also as a little update I did get a lot of 4 78 tubes from eBay for $11 and free shipping and one of the 78 tubes was a Philco branded one.
RE: Just picked up a 1936 Philco 116B Tombstone Radio Today and need some info on it - captainclock1988 - 01-09-2020
Well I got my new 37 Tube today and popped it in to my radio in place of the 84/6Z4 tube that was in there and the radio perked up quite a bit, and the reception on the AM band improved greatly to the point that I was able to pick up WOWO AM 1190 out of Fort Wayne, Indiana which it was barely doing before.
But there's still motorboating/oscillations going on on the SW bands yet which didn't go away when I installed that correct tube, which I'm wondering if its because the shield over the oscillator tube (the 76 Tube) is missing.
I have shields installed over both 77 tubes (which both of them were missing their shields and I had some old ST tube style shields from another old radio I scrapped out that I stuck on there for the time being but they aren't a proper fit).
I've looked all over ebay and all I could find were the later square shaped ST tube shields for the later 116B radios, I couldn't find any of the early 116B rounded style shields.
Does anyone on here have some Rounded style Philco 116B Tube Shields that they could send me?
I need 3 of them.
RE: Just picked up a 1936 Philco 116B Tombstone Radio Today and need some info on it - rfeenstra - 01-09-2020
Put an ad in the WTB section.
RE: Just picked up a 1936 Philco 116B Tombstone Radio Today and need some info on it - EdHolland - 01-09-2020
Can you make a test shield to verify that this is part of your problem?
RE: Just picked up a 1936 Philco 116B Tombstone Radio Today and need some info on it - captainclock1988 - 01-09-2020
Quote:Can you make a test shield to verify that this is part of your problem?
No I can't because I don't have enough tube shields that are the size I need for this radio that will fit over the Shoulder Type Tubes.
Quote:Put an ad in the WTB section.
I just posted one.
RE: Just picked up a 1936 Philco 116B Tombstone Radio Today and need some info on it - captainclock1988 - 01-14-2020
Well I have some bad news, the new tuning dial I had bought and paid $35 for was cut and drilled completely off from where it should of been, so now I'm back to square one as far as having no tuning dial to use for my radio except for the damaged one.
Does anyone on here have a spare 116B tuning dial I can have (I currently have overspent my limit for the month for parts so I can't buy anything else, so buying another dial is out of the question).
And hopefully its one that isn't cut and drilled wonkey like the one I had just bought.
RE: Just picked up a 1936 Philco 116B Tombstone Radio Today and need some info on it - captainclock1988 - 01-14-2020
Also I had taken the tuning mechanism apart to clean and relube it and for some reason after putting it back together the fine tuning knob turns smoothly as it should but coarse tuning knob turns really rough for some reason, and as far as the disassembly and reassembly goes I followed the overhauling instructions that were in the library here.
Any ideas as to what the problem could be?