[morzh]

Fred,

If you feel it is a bit too involved for you, look for the local historic radio / amtique radio / whatever radio club.
They do exist, though not necessarily in your backyard.
They could recommend someone, who for a fee, that could be small or not small -  depends on whether a person does it for fun and just wants to get compensated for parts, or someone who would like to be comensated for the effort too (which is not unreasonable) - might agree to fix the chassis.


But. Here's the thing. If you:
- have basic knowledge of electricity/electronics
- are a safety-minded person, who thinks first and touches later
- not afraid to learn an entirely new field
- a handy and mechanically/electrically apt (you should be, with all those auld gas pumps)
then it might be worth it for you to at least try.

You got to loose nothing, considering it was free, well, then, also your life if you are not careful (but then, working with old gas pumps you should be, all that siphoning gas with your mouth should teach you some good judgement) - and this is the extreme result of many unfortunate circumstances lining up plus retrograde Mercury plus the prince of pork bellies going up too much...nah.

If after all this encouragement you decide to go and replace that loctal panel, one piece of advice: don't work in wet basements (besides the obvious, it's bad for the joints), use an isolation transformer (your radio has one so it is safe, but there is that small chance of leakage plus those pesky Y-caps from the AC line to the chassis) - plenty of them on eBay, and they are not expensive, and do not use a "dim wit" tester (some folks call it "dim bulb"). 

I also take it, you might have some basic Digital Multimeter. That is a basic tool.

So. Choices, choices...


PS. And...you might place an ad here and at ARF (Antique Radios dot com) asking if there is someone who might agree to do it for you. Be mindful of scammers. There are reputable members of thes forums (we are all reputable but once in a while a fresh scammer pops up so we have to weed it out) and ARF has a thread about scammers with fresh updates.

What else. Whatever you do, have fun. Life's too short to fret small things.

Cheers!