[kiwi_steve]

   

Hi all, it's been a while since I posted - or even did anything Philco, despite having a few around that need attention. It's nice to be back into one.

This one was in very poor condition - the cabinet has a big chunk out of it and black oily tar dripped all over the top, and the chassis is very rusty - I've got the dial guide metalwork sitting in evaporust at the moment, and have the rumbly vernier apart for cleaning. On the bright side, it cost me $2 at a swap meet late on the last day, as the owner didn't want to take it home. So I stand to lose a few hours and a couple of bucks at most.

I've scraped and sanded the cabinet, and I've started to layer-fill the chunk that is missing with some old veneer - and I have a spare bit of walnut veneer that looks like it might almost match if I can get it blended in ok - we'll see... I'm not super-good at cabinets but I'll give it a crack.

Electrically, the problems roll on... the speaker field is reading about 53k (should be 1.14k) - so I'm thinking maybe a green break and subsequent high resistance point? And the primary winding of the output TX is open, so it might end up with a non-Philco speaker in it, because the only other EM speakers I have are in other sets - so they would come at the cost of either a complete 60, 37-630 or a 37-640. I also have a PM one in a 38-39 battery set - but I don't know if I want to go down that route.

And the rust - so much rust. I don't know how far I'll go with the chassis. I've taken the tuning gang off to clean that up, so I can at least get that area clean, but I'm not too keen to strip this one too far - it was only supposed to be a quick 'git 'er going' job and the cabinet is already taking more work than I hoped... I only like it because of the cabinet shape... so I guess at least for that reason, I can throw a little more time in to see what I can get done.

I still have to test the mains TX, IF's and coils... I have a spare power transformer that I can use if I need to. I should have done those first, but I'll figure something out if any of them are U/S.

Anyway, I'm not really documenting this one too much - but I thought I'd use it as an excuse to get back to the forums.

Happy New Year everyone!

Cheers, Steve