[Groundhog74]

What she looked like when I got her home

[Image: http://i1319.photobucket.com/albums/t679...628d95.jpg]

What she looked like after 2 days of clean-up.
[Image: http://i1319.photobucket.com/albums/t679...47961e.jpg]

Needs dial glass, dial belt, some more authentic grill cloth and a on-off volume knob. Sounds good as is, but will need a re cap.

[morzh]

Except for glass (which I don't know where to get but I am sure there are places) Adamsradio makes all Zenith belts, Zenith pattern cloth is available in several places and I keep seeing it on eBay.....should be a breeze.

[jerryhawthorne]

Very nice job. Let us know what you did on the photofinish, looks great. Also you process for cleaning etc. that made that finish pop out so nice.
Jerry

[Groundhog74]

Believe it or not all I did was clean it with Guardsman revitalizing wood polish, rubbed it down with a liberal dose of Old English, then after that thoroughly dried I gave it about 3 coats of Briwax.

[Eliot Ness]

Your clean-up and treatment looks great!

[Tom Hamilton]

You did a really nice job on your Zenith. Congratulations on your find! I hope it plays as nice as it looks.

[Groundhog74]

I tempted the Tron God (Goddess?) and tried it out, manually tuning it, as all the tubes checked good. It worked pretty good. Lots of volume, and tons of bass. The tone controls along the left side of the dial do absolutely nothing for now, but I'm sure after re-cap they will work as advertised. I think it'll be one of my favorites when done.

[rocketeer]

My 10S669 sits in the living room as my current primary house player (and also as the wallpaper on my smartphone). Be prepared to replace some (maybe lots of) rubber coated wiring on the chassis. Mine needed 27 new wires plus the entire Radiorgan cable needed to be replaced for a total of 35 wires. Also be careful removing the bandswitch knob as the cast metal linkage is unobtanium. Notice mine has a different pointer. Zenith used two different pointers over the production run of this model for some reason. Mine's plastic and I believe yours is metal? Great player when done so it's worth the extra (PITA) work.

Here's the grille cloth I put in mine, not exact but close.

[Image: http://i863.photobucket.com/albums/ab191...669-55.jpg]

As far as the belt goes, take note there is a rubber insert that the belt rides on and they are almost always dry-rotted. I built up the shaft with tape as a replacement. You can see in the photo where that piece of rubber had worked it's way out from under the belt. The belt you see is the primary belt. There is a second belt that connects the upper pully to the tuning shaft and that's usually the one that breaks.

[Image: http://i863.photobucket.com/albums/ab191...669-21.jpg]

Larry

[morzh]

Mine is motorized; no inserts, but the belt was leather. Of course it de-laminated. I used neoprene round cross-section ones.

[rocketeer]

A motorized 10S669?

Larry

[BrendaAnnD]

Groundhog,

The biggest problem with those tone switches is the switches themselves. The way they are wired, if one switch fails, it takes a bunch of others with it. Sort of like cheap Christmas lights. And those switches do fail, often. I forget which side (bass or treble) has the real problem switch, but basically the cheap spring metal loses its spring and will no longer touch the contact. When this happens, the downstream series connected switches will no longer function. I have 3 Zenith chassis with this exact problem.

[rocketeer]

Are you sure you're talking about the Radiorgan tone (flip) switches? Those flip switches are like any other switch that needs occassional maintenance. Clean the contacts and they will work fine for years. Each switch is individually wired so if one does stop working it has no effect on the other switches electrically.

These are the Radiorgan tone switches. The individual contacts can easily be seen.

[Image: http://i863.photobucket.com/albums/ab191...669-31.jpg]

Larry

[Steve D]

I had the same issues with my 10-S-669 and when I took the assembly completely apart for re-wiring I removed the switch tabs and after polishing then with crokus cloth I bent the together so the touched each other before re-installing. This gave a nice tight contact. I also used a bit of battery terminal dielectric grease on each contact to prevent future oxidation.

Here is a photo of my 10-S-669 which was my first old radio which I bought in 1974.

http://galleries.shacknet.nu/steves/gall...s/P1150017

Steve D

[morzh]

Larry

No, 9S269, I meant the belts used irregardless of what Zenith it is.

[Groundhog74]

Rocketeer....nice radio! Mine actually has a belt on the primary (?) pulley but the secondary that goes up to the tuning shaft has a dial cord on it. Maybe a repairman's mod? The rubber piece that the belt rides on is there, but looks like it could crumble into dust at any moment. I'll do the electrical tape deal first when I get the new belt and see how that works.
I was talking about the radio organ switches. (New to Zenith consoles and the terminology). They are making contact, but kinda loose. I cleaned them a little and will probably tighten them up and re-clean them when I do the re-cap. The wire bundle coming from the radio organ assembly was basically all bare wire as the rubber coating had disappeared at some point. Before I tried it out, I recovered all of that wiring, and any under the chassis that was exposed, or looked like it might remotely be a shorting hazard. I learned that lesson the hard way on a Philco 42-380. I am also going to order some more authentic grill cloth. I just had to temporarily replace the dirty, moldy original stuff so the wife would let me bring it in the house