Hello Everyone - New to this forum. I'm in the middle of a chassis restoration on a beautiful 41-290.
I picked up the piece recently on CL. Cabinet was refinished, in natural !!! Don't laugh !!! I may go back to the original color, but first things first.
After I removed the chassis, I noticed that the on/off switch was bypassed, so power on was achieved by plugging it in !!!
My question is can I replace this switch with another Philco chassis switch that is similar or identical? 41-280 perhaps?
When my pals were reading comic books
I was down in the basement in my dad's
workshop. Perusing his Sam's Photofoacts
Vol 1-50 admiring the old set and trying to
figure out what all those squiggly meant.
Circa 1966
Now I think I've got!
I repaired the power switch in a 41-250 a few weeks ago. I carefully drilled out the rivets, removed the switch, and pushed the the rivets through the holes. One of them took light persuasion from a hammer.
The wires were not soldered inside the switch housing, but only pushed into place. That might be the failure mode. I removed all the metal pieces and polished them with 0000 steel wool, including the rotating piece. I soldered new wires onto the two bent brass pieces and reinstalled them back in the housing along with the rotating piece. It is easy to see how everything goes together, but it wouldn't hurt to photograph everything when you disassemble it.
I put the housing back in place, making sure that the spiral piece on the push button plunger was in place. I put the housing back on with #3 machine screws. One of the two screws has to be exactly the right length to go through the metal and no longer, so I just nibbled away at it by trial and error until it was short enough.
I couldn't find any #3 self-tapping screws at my local hardware stores, which would have been ideal. I found by experiment that a #4 self-tapping screw from my junk box would put the right threads in the hole for the machine screws, because it is tapered at the end. It's too big in diameter to go all the way through, but if you put it in about one turn or so and then back it off, it will cut all the threads you need in the hole. You could also buy a #3-40 tap from Amazon. (Package of three for $10.)
I didn't think to take pictures until I was almost through. I've repaired two of them this way, and both work well. It takes a couple of pushes on the button before everything centers and begins to work as it is supposed to.
John Honeycutt
(This post was last modified: 01-16-2018, 05:21 PM by Raleigh.)
Finally back on this thread! Got the baby back from Northern Television & Vacuum in Madison Heights, Michigan. Full chassis restoration including, ahem, bluetooth receiver! Pic's to follow!
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