[morzh]

Well....that is cheaper than Hayseed.....plus they never gave me the quote after the first reply.
Now's too late.
The caps were maybe $1.50p each and the cap came apart real easy, almost no effort at all.
Vinegar bath dissolved everything unneeded, and then drying and baking, and strategic drilling, soldering and gluing.

These are the ingredients.

   

Drilling holes so the caps fit without wiring.
   
   

Soldered
   

Glued together.
   

[vecher]

Mike, Quick question How did you lubricate the switches? If you did,what did you use.. and how did you get to those switches..

Skip

[morzh]

Skip

Quick answer: I haven't yet lubricate them. They work fine as is, so I a not sure I need to; however I am also not sure if you refer to the electrical part or the mechanical part.
For mechanical part usually it is some sort of solid lube or the same white lithium grease.
Electrical - Deoxit D.

[vecher]

Electrical part.. Mine has a OFF button and then several band buttons .. when you press say the AM button the resistance of the Primary of the transformer should read lets say 25 ohms.. if I press any of the other band buttons the resistance should be the same.. When you push the OFF button it kicks off any bands and resistance goes to infinity..

But mine doesn't do that if In push the say AM button the resistance goes all over then place if I move the off button around sometimes I can get the right readings but not all the time..

So my guess is the OFF button in the position that its needs to be is intermittent However I cannot seem to get to the switch easily I tried to put in some deoxit.. but probably did not get it to the right place..

maybe I need a spray can? mine is a pump can..

Skip

[morzh]

You use D5, right? Not the F5 Fader lube?

[vecher]

yup Dp5 Pump Spray.. Doesn't seem to get into the switch well

Skip

[morzh]

I only use pressurized spray.
Don't buy swivel type, they leak. Badly.

[rfeenstra]

I can't figure out why they keep using that swivel tube. I've never had one that worked. They all leak. I would think they've had enough complaints by now to quit selling it.

[morzh]

They sent me free regular can when I complained.
An extra expense for them.

[morzh]

Today I was ready to turn it on.
The AC mating plug for the chassis cannot be easily detached from the back cover so I realized the US plug for some power supplies used today (two-pin female with rounded ends, pluggable into power supplies) would probably fit, and, after trimming some excess plastic, it did.

Upon ramping up the voltage there was no sound, but then I saw smoke.
The smoke was coming from under the audio transformer, and, having exhausting all the tricks to see where it was coming from, and being afraid it was the transformer (which was cool as a cucumber), I removed the transformer.
The smoke was coming from 10K resistor from the 10K/8uF filter.
Then I found a bent lead of a resistor touching the lug and shorting the 8uF cap to the GND. Upon removing that the smoking stopped, and the resistor is still 10K.
I mentioned in the beginning the assembly relies on many leads holding their shapes and not touching stuff with them not being insulated.
But some are really close to other lugs or leads and I expected something like this might happen. Hopefully this is the extent of it, and tomorrow I will replace the transformer and attempt the power-up again.

[morzh]

Not out of the woods yet....

Tonight re-installed the output transformer. Put in my 8-Ohm speaker.....turned on the power with the voltmeter on the cap that was shorted before: the last filter, so if the voltage starts sagging anywhere, I will see it.
Turn-on. First I heard a pop at 70V. OFF!!! Found a piece of solder wire landed in a tube panel. Whew!
Turned it on again. The voltage was stable, and I brought it up to the nominal. The speaker made some raspy sounds. I heard a barely noticeable hum when putting an ear against the speaker. Then I started with the tuning. The band was BC, so I expected to hear the local station at 1160kC. But....no.
Then the speaker made a howl, a one-tone type - something got to generate; I turned down the volume, the howl disappeared.
Then I looked at the voltmeter....the voltage was really down, to 35V (instead of 140V or so) and I started to worry, but before I couold start to worry, I saw a faint white smoke....same general location it came out before. Turned it off.
Then I pulled most tubes out, and started looking. The voltage goes up, and then sags, but within reason.
I re-installed the tubes, one by one....the voltage held. I put the output ones, connected the speaker. Heard noise, and it felt like the radio noise, so I tuned into 1160kC and.....the station came through. I let it play a few minutes. Tried the tone control; when using the top band, the howl returned and disappeared when the volume was reduced.
So.....it is a progress, but I do not like inexplicable smoking. Plus I have not brought the voltage all the way up: it stayed at 90V AC.

I have to tell you: the assembly of this thing is absolutely horrible. Borderline flimsy. The wires are thin, really thin. Many parts have their leads formed and not insulated, relying on the rigidity of the leads to not bend and short to something.
The ERO caps are just bad: I remember using a non-recapped (I left all paper caps in place) Zenith and it in fact worked just fine. I highly doubt this one would. I am not saying I am disappointed, but I expected a bit more sturdiness from the assembly of a good German radio of the 50s.hing

Now...need to carefully bring the voltage up. If sags, find out who does it.
Then find out why it howls. A few tubes have shields: all are installed and grounded (they use soldered wires).
Some tubes used adhesive strips to hold them (fighting microphonics?) - those are no longer used as I do not have them. But I doubt this is them.

Oh.....the rectifier is selenium. But. It works fine. I checked the ripple on it - real small. Rectifies fine, no hum or anything. I am reluctant to replace it. Plus there is no good way of doing it: it is a small job and is on the external side of the chassis.

[radiohenry]

Where can you buy the regular can of D5?
                          Thanks,
                                 Henry

[morzh]

https://www.parts-express.com/caig-d5s-6...U8QAvD_BwE

[Paul Philco322]

I can get it at You Do It, bring you some after COVID.

Paull

[morzh]

I do not know how potent it is. I also do not know how potent I want it.
When I put it on fairly blackened sliding switch, visually I did not see any change, and I will have top wait 'till tomorrow for it to dry before I could check if it had any real effect. The black is clearly the oxidized stuff as when I touched it with a Qtip, it dirtied it.


This said, the sliding switches in this radio are not really well-accessible for maintenance.
I put the straw inside from the back and sprayed some, but I do not know where and whether it gets in the places intended. So since the pins are embedded via holes in the phenolic case, which have some spacing, I put the Deoxit right at the base of the pin. I saw the liquid penetrate, at which point I work the switch to distribute it. Like I said, I am not sure how effective it is.
Then again, if I use pro strength CC, I could not be sure it won't harm something.

Taking that thing apart.....I'd rather take on 38-690 packet switch assembly than on this one. It is my impression that this radio was created to last a long time, then die and never be resurrected or repaired. It does not lend itself to easy maintenance. No sir. Buy a new Grundig.

I suspect the howling in the speaker is due to the fact that there is some feedback from the speaker assembly when it all plugged in. When I simply put two-wire speaker in, the feedback is disengaged.

Tried other bands, including FM. Nothing so far.
Oh....the Magic Eye is not green. Whether it is due to the tube being bad, or something else - I do not know that. First I want the radio to function, then I will take care of the Green Eye.