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40-185 Tuning Oddities - Printable Version

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40-185 Tuning Oddities - Guest - 01-12-2006

I recently bought a nicely preserved 40-185 which promptly started right up after finding a missing 7C6 tube. The tuning seems a bit funny and I'm at a bit of a loss as to why. This model has a dial as well as pre set push buttons, all of which work well. It also has 3 bands, AM, SW, and Police. If I nutralize the push buttons, I'm assuming that the dial then becomes active. However, when the knob is turned, all I hear is the typical buzzing from power lines etc (not confused with the capacitor's humming if they are bad) and no stations. If I use the presets, the 1st 2 buttons give a few local channels loud and clear. The tuner turns freely and touching the antenna connections changes the level/loudness of the AM static, but no stations. Could someone explain how the presets work VS the dial tuner, and hopefully why the presets work but the tuner doesn't.
Any and all help is appreciated!

Jim

- Chuck Schwark - 01-12-2006

One of the pushbuttons selects MANUAL TUNING and if it's not pushed in, you'll get nothing. I believe it's the far right pushbutton, if I'm not mistaken.

On most pushbutton type radios, there will always be a MANUAL selection, although there may be rare exceptions I'm not familiar with.

- Guest - 01-12-2006

Thanks for the help...it worked! I read (in another thread) about dirty contacts causing issues as well so pushing the rightmost butto and wiggling it a bit allowed the other stations to come in loud and clear...I have to admit i was surprised. I appears that someone recapped the unit at some point and now it works quite well, at leat on AM. The other 2 bands are unknown since they are typically quiet during the day, but I didn't hear much static either.
I guess one task at a time is best.....

Thanks again,

Jim

- Ron Ramirez - 01-12-2006

Hi Jim

You need to clean the contacts on all of the pushbuttons, as well as the contacts on the band switch. Deoxit is great for this. I tried CRC QD Contact Cleaner on my 40-155 (nearly identical chassis to your set) and it didn't work; the band switch and pushbuttons remained intermittent. After a dose of Deoxit, though, everything is fine; all pushbuttons now work as intended as does the band switch. All three bands are alive and work fine.

These are actually pretty good performers; they get their bad reputation from the rubber insulation used on the wires. Once you replace the old rubber as well as all of the paper capacitors and off-tolerance resistors, though, you have a really good, sensitive radio.