[jcassity]

well, this radio did not make it to the christmas gift pile,

it just occured to me (sunk in) that the only way the IF can have resistivity between pin 3 and pin 1 is through the caps.
by design, its a single mounting pad but 45% of the pad on the left and right are allocated to each separate cap. the gap in between is getting full of crud that bridges the pri and sec coils.

I know i have to remove the rivit.

i will take the first IF apart again.
I will see if i can rake a dental tool along the gap to remove anything that bridges these two caps.
basially hoe out any debris to separate the two sections.

i was so confussed becuase i found it nearly impossible for the pri coil to be touching the sec coil, now that i see the flaw in the cap design, two caps under one roof, i get it now.

i want to re-assemble and see what happens.
if anyone has already done this and it fails, then i wont waste my time coming up with what i think is an original idea yet its already been done and doesnt work.

so.... let me know.

the purpose is to see if this can be done with little affect on the alignment.


one interesting troubleshooting method was revealed to me by a vid where the gent had poping noises like i had during the time the radio was working. His symptom was some speaker volume but no stations come in. he flipped the chassis over to show the bottome of the IF. He turned out the lights and operated the volume control and other widgets. with lights out and when poping noises happened, you could "SEE" bright flashes of light at the base of the IF.
Key indicator early on that the IF could be the root problem.