[morzh]

Tim

There are two problems.

1. The washer is supposed to be a fiber one. I do not know if it is a problem or not in your case as you need to find out if it is insulated somehow. Basically it is in parallel to the main group of the tuning cap so if it shorts you will see the whole group shorted.

2. The other obvious problem I see is the upper plate of that trimmer cap is cut to a small size which may or may not affect the operation but if it does not tune right when you try to align it it might be the case. You could try to add a small capacitance in parallel, or simply solder a regular 20-40pF trimmer cap across and see if this helps.